


Almost

by widovvmakers



Category: Marvel
Genre: AU, F/F, F/M, platonic, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 08:36:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5157230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/widovvmakers/pseuds/widovvmakers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natalia could always escape if she wanted to. With her hands tied to her back, with a broken rib or two, she was always capable of getting herself out and back home safe. Except this time, she was already at home. She wasn’t trapped – she was being punished. And a kid that escapes time out is only put back into it again the minute they’re found.<br/>After failing murdering of Captain America weeks before the World War II was over, Natalia found herself trapped in a cell way too familiar to her own taste. They trapped the Black Widow on her own web, punishing her by keeping her in a cell that she had to stay in. But in the cell next to hers, another thing was brewing.  | story written for the Natasha Romanoff big bang.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, I finished up writing this a few months ago and I'm excited to finally post it. It was written for the Natasha Romanoff Big Bang of 2015 (http://romanoffbigbang.tumblr.com/), and it was my first marvel fic. Hope you guys like it!  
> this is the art bukcybrnes did for my fic! http://bukcybrnes.tumblr.com/post/132735890470/

 

 

 

 

 

__“The saddest word in the whole while world is the word almost.__ __She was almost good for him._ _ __He was almost in love._ _ __She almost stopped him._ _ __He almost waited._ _ __He almost lived._ _ __They almost made it.”_ _

 

 

 

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It hurt. Her chest went up and down a few times before she opened them again, but it made no difference. It was still dark. There wasn’t a window on the door, and she knew why that was – they knew she wouldn’t attempt to escape. There was no point in watching her.

 She forced herself to move, her back touching the wall behind her within seconds. A sigh almost escaped her mouth when her bruise scraped it, but she held it in, curving her eyebrows and pressing her lips together into a frown. She gritted her teeth, stretching her legs, until her feet touched the door, her knees bent slightly forward. If that had been a mission, her head would have been running with escape plans. To be honest, it already was. She would be able to escape that cell within a few days – she was completely capable of doing so – but it would be of no use. Her boss threw her in there in the first place. If she escaped, she would just be tossed there again. She was being punished, not tortured. She should be thankful that she was able to tell the difference - there were days where she wasn't. Belyakov knew her from the inside out. He knew how to push all of her buttons because he was the one who placed them there in the first place. He had made her. She was his Pinocchio, and she had learned a long time ago that she would never get to be a real boy.

 Her hands moved, searching for her own body, her elbow scratching against the wall beside her. She attempted to twist her arm so she was able to touch her ribs, but that didn’t work. Teeth gritted, she shifted, and a string of pain shot up through her whole body. It didn’t take long until her face was up against the wall of her cell. It wasn’t cold, so it wasn’t metal. It wouldn’t be that hard to escape- She moved her head away only for a few inches, only to hit it against the wall almost gently. It was the closest she would get for a wake up slap.

 She wouldn’t escape. She would only leave when he wanted her to – that drove her insane. And he knew it. Taking another deep breath, even though it felt as a stab in her chest, she moved her arm slowly, reaching for the other wall. When she was pressed against one of the walls, only her fingertips found the other one, not her palm. It was a small comfort. Her fingers went from the wall to the side of her body. She gasped quietly, and hated herself for allowing it to escape. It was swollen, and she knew that in the minute her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she would be able to see a bruise. Definitely broken ribs, she thought, her fingers carefully pressing against her skin. As if she needed further confirmation, an intake of breath caused a burst of pain through her chest. Stupid shield. Stupid America, and its Captain.

The mission sounded down right impossible the minute she heard it, but she heard it nonetheless. Ambush on a train, while the – German, of course – train was being ambushed itself by Captain America. Easier that way, and they would take any chance at making it easier.  People would blame Germany, never Russia. After all, they were supposed to be allies. But the war was ending, and with it, the necessity of both nations, so different from each other, working together. Captain America was a threat. And the best thing she did was wipe away threats. That was why Belyakov, and the NKVD loved her so much – as far as loving can go with her. 

The only person who was going to accompany Captain on the train's attack was Barnes, his sidekick. He, too, was dangerous, but nothing that Natasha couldn't handle easily. Her real problem was Captain America. But instead of telling Belyakov what was going through her mind – she had learned against it through the years – she said she could do it. Kill Captain America and you kill America's spirit. And it had to be dead and buried by the time the war was over.

Captain America alone, except for his side-kick, out of sight of his comrades and attacking a HYDRA train. A situation like this was not likely to repeat itself, not by the way the war was going. She could not fail.

But she did.

And that was why she was trapped inside the cubicle, ribs broken and other injuries she still didn't care to discover. She knew there was something wrong with her leg. Pain radiated from it, but she couldn’t bring herself to move and check it. She could almost feel the sting that would hit her if she tried to reach it, so she gritted her teeth some more and leaned against the wall.Her eyes got used to the darkness, so she could make out where the wall ended and the rest of her body. There wasn’t anything else inside the box. Just her. They had taken out all of her weapons – even her Widow’s Bite. She had clothes on, but she felt just as naked as if she hadn’t. Her hand gripped tightly around her wrist, feeling the unusual naked skin, the silence beginning to smother her. The pain in her ribs didn’t stop her from feeling lonely.

She saw the look in Captain America’s face when his friend fell of the train, or, as he thought, to his death. She knew that no one would ever have that look on their face if she died. She knew that she would never have that look on her face if someone died. And for just a second – maybe because it was dark and cold, or because she was all pain and tired – it made her feel sad. She took a long, painful (and it was long just because she wanted it to be painful, just like a disobedient dog needs to get kicked sometimes) breathe and forced the sadness out of her body. Having someone was not supposed to be something she aimed for. It was a liability, and she couldn’t afford those. She had her country. Her mission. Her mind had to be set on that, and not on keeping someone else alive. She was fully capable of keeping her own back safe.

 

                     

* * *

 

 

She drifted off to sleep without noticing it, not that she was exactly avoiding it. It wasn’t comfortable, but she had worse before. She learned to sleep wherever she needed to, and most of all, she learned to keep her sleep light as a feather. That was why she woke up with the sound of voices just outside of her cell. She felt a bit disorientated, blinking her eyes, as if she hoped that between the closing and opening of her eyelids some light would show up. But most of all, she was confused by her arm being cuddled up beside her, and not cuffed up, against the bed frame. She put her fingers around her wrist, massaging it, an old habit.

**“I thought he was dead.”** The first voice stated, in Russian. Female, but not exactly. Belova, she was still a young girl, barely legal. Eager to help and learn. She already hated the Americans more than she hated the war. 

**“Barely.”** The other replied. She recognized the voice quicker than she did with Belova’s. Rumlow. His voice was deep, and mean, his American accent almost completely gone by now – he was already more Russian than American, after all. He was fond of calling her a necessary evil. He was also fond of torturing her when she had done wrong, and calling _that_ a necessary evil. She knew that it had to be him that told Belyakov to trap her there as a punishment. Her focus on the last few months had been Captain America, and she had lost her last chance at the train. Keeping her in lockdown until she was almost over the edge, but not enough so they wouldn’t be able to pull her back, was perfect. Belyakov and his dog knew that being locked up with the chance of escaping but having no use in it would drive her insane.

**“Why did Romanov bring him in?”** The younger asked, and she started to move, biting down on her cheek to not make a sound, slipping nearer the wall where most likely the door was for better hearing.

**“He was Captain’s side-kick. He can be useful.”**

**“To Russia?”** The girl sounded confused. She herself couldn’t see how Barnes would be useful, she just knew he could be. She saw him, after he fell. Lying on the snow, his left arm ripped off his body, no here to be seen. Still breathing – well, almost not breathing. But he still could make out some two or three dirty American words to her before blacking out. When she looked at him, she thought _strong_. She thought _worthy_. She thought _useful._ So she brought him back, part of her hoping that Belyakov would consider it an apology.

**“Don’t expect me to tell you all of Belyakov plans, do you, girl?”** He snapped at Belova, already tired from her inquiries.

**“No, sir. Of course not, sir.”** She replied, in an urge to please Natalia recognized from her first years in the job.

**“Put him in the cell.”**

She stepped back faster than she should have dared to. The grunt of pain almost came out of her mouth, but she bit down the back of her hand. She hated how not-herself the cell made her feel. It wasn’t the thought of being trapped in a cell. It was the fact that she was tangled in a spider’s web, with no way to free herself unless it allowed her. Usually, she was on the other side of the game.

Of course her door didn’t open – she didn’t even expect it too, but just realized it after she forced her wounded body to move back. She placed her back against the wall she was before once again, and listened. When the other door was open and when a body was released to the floor right beside her. Literally, right beside her. The drop was so loud that she was sure that the only thing between her and America’s most loved side-kick was a wall. The door closed and with a few words that soon turned into unintelligible murmurs, the two people were gone. She was, again, alone with her thoughts – except that this time, she wasn’t fully and truly alone.

 

                       

* * *

 

 

Barnes was noisy. He obviously wasn't used to being on lockdown, and his string of English swearing showed that he was not happy to be there. There wasn't much he could do – he was in pretty bad shape when she found him and she doubted that he was much better by now. But he was, indeed, doing his best. She could hear him shift in his box, failed attempts at kicking the door in front of him. What he did the most was talk. She didn't move for the whole hour he wasted. Quietly, leaning against the wall, her hand pressing against the bruise on her torso in an empty hope of healing it. Her breath was calm. Listening to Barnes' breakdown, she began to accept her fate. She didn't want to end up like him, pathetically struggling and screaming instead of studying the plan ahead.

The idea of his usefulness started to shape. He was, as far as the world knew, not only Captain America's side-kick, but his best friend. He was the second most loved person on America. And what best way to hurt both Captain and country to its core than to use his loved friend against it?

Even if he failed to comply. NKVD knew how to turn people inside out until they couldn't tell who they were anymore. She knew the line of montage. A smirk dared to trespass her face. If she were right, if they would turn this boy into something else, a weapon, Russia's own Captain, the mission wouldn't have failed completely.

The boy had fallen silent. The walls weren't thin enough so she could hear his breathing, but logic told her that he had fallen asleep – it had been a long day, longer for him than for her. Certain that he wouldn't hear her, she moved, going back to the place she was before, when she fell asleep. There wasn't much to do except wait for food and to sleep and to heal. There was not room to do exercises – even if her body supported it. She let out a sigh of pain, one that had been struggling to leave her body for a long time, and closed her eyes.

"Who's there?" The voice was quick, lower than the screams before. She opened her eyes and held herself still. No answer.

 "Who's there?" He asked again, and she could hear him getting closer to the wall that separated them, small grunts escaping his mouth whenever it hurt too much to hold in.

She tried to picture him crouched, trying to listen, but her brain insisted on putting an arm that she knew it wasn't there. "Did they get you too?" It came out softer this time.

Her brain raced with the weights of pros and cons. She had no guarantee if Belyakov was going to turn him into an _it_. Even if she was right – which she thought she was – she didn't know how long it would take. She knew the steps, but it could take a long time to break the boy – he had too many memories attached fondly to the United States. And he wouldn't properly remember anything. The brainwash would wipe him out completely, even his time on the cage. Having someone to talk to, even if that someone was on the death row, one way or another, it was better than being left alone with her own thoughts for weeks.

"I work for them." She replied, her English painted with traces of Russian accent that she fought hard to erase. They were small, but any true American would notice them, and those were the ones she wanted to fool. Silence on the other end of the line, and annoyance started to creep up her body.

"Are you a guard?"

"No."

"Then why are you here?" He snapped, angry. She could almost feel him boiling, with confusion, pain, anger.

"Because." Even if the only two possible options was Barnes's persona or actual body being killed, she didn't want to risk anything. He was quiet, and so was she.

"What..." He began to form a sentence, but stopped himself. She waited, not wanting to show curiosity or concern. “What happened to my arm?” His voice came out so sad and broken, and for the first time, she realized how much of a boy he was, and wondered what his age was. Her expression flickered, almost softening, but she hardened herself again.

“You lost it.”  She replied in a flat tone.

“I noticed that.” He said, strangled, in a clear attempt at muffling his feelings. She could picture him, touching the end of his left shoulder, where his arm was supposed to be. She tried to picture herself without an arm, and her hand shot up to her wrist again, in a nervous movement, caressing her skin in a way Barnes wasn’t able to anymore. He would never touch his wrist again. “How?”

Natalia kept quiet, pressing her lips together. She felt quite lost at the conversation. It was odd. She didn’t have any orders to fulfill right now, and this conversation was a strategy she created to avoid going mad, not one Belyakov gave her. She wasn’t undercover. She wasn’t in a mission, or training for one. Once again, she remembered how much of a good idea it was to punish her by keeping her locked.

“Please.” Bucky said, in a soft tone, as if he could coerce her into talking. “I don’t… I don’t remember anything.” He took a deep breath, and she was quiet. “I just remember being with Steve and… And then… Fuck.”

She swallowed dry, and looked away. Not that it made a difference. It was pitch black in one direction or the other. And she could blame the darkness all she wanted, or maybe her certain that Barnes wouldn’t be allowed to keep these memories, but that too, wouldn’t make a difference. She was going against her judgment.

“You fell off the train. It was a big – it was a huge – fall. I don’t know how you lost your arm. Somewhere between the sky and the ground, obviously. But when they found you, your arm wasn’t near.” The lie slipped through her lips without an ounce of hesitation, even though she only decided to tell it after she started talking. She couldn’t exactly pinpoint why, but she didn’t feel like saying "when I found you."

“They?” He asked, focusing on the part of the story that hurt the less. “I thought you said you worked for them.”

“Us.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Will you stop questioning me?” She said, through gritting teeth. Yes, she was. It hurt to breathe, and she could swear her mouth watered at the thought of painkillers.

He started to laugh, but it ended up in a sob. Which grew into another one. And another. It was an ugly cry, shoulders-shaking, trouble-breathing cry. She couldn’t see him, but she knew. Her jaw tensed as she waited for him to stop. It turned her stomach into knots. Stop crying, she wanted to say. It could be worse. It will be worse.

Barnes didn’t seem like the kind of man that would cry while being aware that someone else was completely capable of listening. But even still, he didn’t seem like stopping. Every sob was louder and stronger, waves crashing down onto each other. One part of her wanted to scream at him the way Rumlow screamed at her all those years ago. You don’t get to cry. Crying makes you weak. Crying makes you human. Another part of her – the smartest one – chose to keep quiet. It was safer that way.

And one tiny part of her, one that she didn’t even dare to acknowledge because it would open a door she couldn’t afford to open, wanted to comfort him. That part knew why he was crying – He had lost everything, in a span of twenty-four hours. He knew, just as much as she did, that there was no way of making out of there alive. But even so, she would never-

And then it hit her.

She would never have a breakdown like the one Barnes was having because she was on the other side of the gun.

She would never cry like he was crying because she wasn’t the one who lose everything.

She was the one that took other’s people everything away.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Her internal clock was all wrong. She couldn’t find one gripping point that helped her make sense of the schedules. Yes, she did her best. She avoided falling asleep before she had spent an acceptable amount of time awake, but then she couldn’t tell how much she had slept when she woke up. Her meals came in a different time than Barnes', always an hour or more earlier, and it was always the same thing, so she couldn’t tell what part of the day it was. - She knew that they were giving him food because right after she had finished her meal, she heard him swearing and grunting while trying to eat. She had looked to her empty dish, imagining if she would struggle so much to eat with just one arm, like he was. – And not even leaning against the floor to see through the small window they opened to slide the plate inside helped – it was an inside room, no windows close by for her to see through. The bold move just made her ribs hurt more than they already were. After all, they only hurt when she breathed.

Her plan of talking to Barnes had failed, mostly because she couldn’t bring herself to start a conversation. She wasn’t trying to manipulate him, so she found herself in a lack of words that did not sit well in her stomach. She didn’t miss talking, not yet. She had gone longer without uttering a word, but it had a purpose. A plan to fulfill, a cell to escape. This one, she couldn’t escape.

She snapped her head up when she heard the small door’s sound, and in a matter of seconds, she had her meal and was in the dark again. Her eyes were already used to it, and she could almost see what was inside of those four walls, even though it wasn’t much anymore. She was about to start eating it when she heard the door open again, this time, a little to her right. They were feeding them at the same time, which meant they already knew there was no way that they could get the tiniest idea of time right anymore.

“What did you get?” She waited a few seconds to ask it, just to make sure they were alone. Her voice was a bit husky, but she didn’t cough to make it better. She leaned closer to the wall, waiting for an answer, which she didn’t get, not immediately.

The food didn’t look appealing, for what she could see, but that wasn’t why she frowned at it. She quickly corrected her expression, realizing just after it there was no reason to. In the dark, she didn’t need to keep a blank stare.

“Disgusting crap. As usual.” He said, his voice steady, in a way she hadn’t heard until now. “You?”

“Same as you.”

Silence filled the air as they ate, but not real silence. Not the kind that held you down and made you feel as if you couldn’t break. It was the kind of silence where you could hear the constant shuffling of a person's body, unable to keep still, always moving. She couldn't hear him shifting in his cell, because it was impossible for him to do so – she remembered him as bigger than her, and she was sure that the cell was the same size as hers – without bumping on the walls. The food was hard on her teeth and there were times she had to chew a bit harder just to break it into smaller pieces so she could swallow.

“What are you doing here?” He asked, out of the blue. She caught a glimpse of hesitation on his voice, as if the question was bothering him for days but he hadn't built up the courage to do it.

She pressed her lips together, her hand going for her wrist in a familiar way, that was becoming much more familiar now that no one was watching. The biggest part of her told her what she already knew to be truth – she couldn’t tell him anything. Not anything important, anyway. And that was important. It was the way the NKVD worked, and the way they were thinking of working after the Great War ended.  
I can’t tell you that, she almost said, but it sounded too much as if she wanted to, and couldn’t. She didn’t want to. She knew where her loyalties lied.

“I’m not going to tell you that.”

“Russians are fucking weird.” He mumbled, and she felt rage fill her body. She loved her country, with every problem it had. It wasn’t the training in the Red Room that conditioned her to do so. It was Bolshoi, and the dance, and the warmth of her parents. All the culture. All the culture the world seemed to ignore.

**“You don’t know what you are talking about, kid.”** She said, anger painting her voice. They get to have a Captain named after their country, and Russians couldn’t be patriotic.

**“Yes, I do.”** He snapped back, in Russian, catching her off guard. His Russian was worse than her English, but even so, it surprised her. **“You’re being held by your people as a war prisoner. And you’re still loyal.”** His words didn’t hurt her. She was beyond that. Feelings were just chemical reactions, Belyakov had told her once. And if you’re beat by chemicals, you’re no better than an addict.

**“If they’re holding me here, they have a reason. One you wouldn’t understand.”** She didn’t hesitate to answer. Most of all, she wanted him to know. That she was different from him. That she was stronger, in a way that he would never be.

Once again, they fell silent. She heard him move and place the plate near the door, and then drop his body back to the floor, sighing.

“Okay then.” He said, after a few minutes, and she frowned, wondering if they were still in the same conversation.

“Okay then?” She asked, out of spite.

“You love your country, I love mine. Okay then.”

She felt herself looking away.

“Okay then.” Her words mimicked his. He could love America from this shithole they were in. His sweet America wouldn’t come back to save him either way.

 

* * *

 

Apart from the pain in her ribs, her leg seemed to have healed off – from whatever it was. She enjoyed being able to move it around, which considering the conditions she was in, it involved stretching and pulling it back to her body, but it was still movement that didn’t hurt. She tried to count how many days she was in there, and she didn’t even close her eyes to focus – her sight was already used to the darkness, and now her mind was starting too as well. A week? Probably more. Most likely more. Maybe two weeks. She was lost in her thoughts when Barnes spoke.

“What’s your name?”

She had come with terms with her own plan. Starting conversation with the American was not an idea she was incredibly fond of, but neither was the idea of solitude for probably months. So she would answer when he talked, which he did, usually after five meals. She still wasn’t sure if they gave them two or three a day, and she could no longer recognize the concept of hours to figure it out. She couldn’t tell if ten minutes had passed or thirty. She hated feeling this disconnected.  
Again, an imaginary scale appeared on her mind, as she thought about his question, and her available answers. There were a lot of girls called Natalia.

“Natalia.” She replied, quietly.

“Natalia.” He repeated. His tongue struggled with her name for a little bit, but it came out almost perfectly. There was no point in blaming him – she would probably struggle to say Barnes as well, even though she said it in her mind all the time. She never heard her name said in such an honest way. “Not Natalie?” He tried for the American version.

“No.” She corrected, almost instantly. “Natalia.”

“It’s prettier than Natalie.”

“Of course it is.” Her voice came out almost smug, and she thought she heard a chuckle.

“It could be Natasha, too.” He suggested.

“Natasha.” She tried out, her tongue rolling at the sh.

"You like it?” He asked, and she stopped for a second. Again, a first. She couldn’t remember the last time someone asked if she liked something. Not some character she was playing on a mission, but herself.

“Yes. It’s nice.” She said, leaning her head against the wall. Natasha. It was a good sounding name. It made people struggle with it for just a second, and that was what she wanted. She was never the sort of person who wanted to roll off people’s tongue easily. “I can’t use it, though.” The words weren’t meant for him – she was thinking out loud. It wasn’t louder than a whisper, and for the tiniest second, she thought he hadn’t heard.

“What?” He asked, as if he didn’t hear her properly. When she was quiet in return, he went forward. “Why?” She felt a rush of doubt run through her system, and she found herself in the position that was getting too familiar to her taste of not knowing whether to tell the boy the truth. She had never been trained in having an honest conversation. Sometimes, she hated that she wasn’t trying to manipulate him.

“Because.” She said, matter-of-factly.

He sighed in frustration, and she shifted in her place, waiting for the comeback.

“What? State secret?” His tone was mocking, like a joke. She wasn’t sure if he hated it or not, but she knew she was supposed to. So she did.

“Yes.” Everything about me is a state secret.

“Alright then, Natalia.”

“Is your name really Bucky Barnes?” She asked, suddenly, trying to divert the attention from herself and trying her best not to get his name wrong.

“Hm? No.” He said, his voice sounding just the bit confused she needed to know he was taken aback from the question. “No, it’s not. It’s a nickname. Well, the first part. Barnes is my real name.”

“What’s your real name?”

“I’m not telling you that.” He sounded almost defensive.

“Why not?”

“Because.”

She felt her face shift with emotion, and because it was dark, she didn’t hold back. Her lips slightly parted, and her eyes furrowed in a sign of displease.

“Because?”

“Yes. Because.”

She shut her mouth, and glared at the darkness, but in the direction she knew it was the door. If there wasn’t a wall between the both of them, he would be able to see she was ignoring him. She felt angry. And she wanted to let herself feel angry, because there was just so much to be angry about. She wanted to allow herself to feel what she needed to feel, and make someone to listen and understand her. However, she knew it was wrong. She knew that if she let it all out, they would force it all in again. Everyone breaks, eventually. She had learned that, and Belyakov made sure she would never forget it.  
So she swallowed her anger, knowing that not even half of it was directed to the boy who triggered it. Another feeling rushed over her body, but this one, she could handle. She felt tired. Even guns run out of bullets. This one, she was allowed.

“Natalia?” He called, quietly. She didn’t answer. No, she wouldn’t risk it. Not now. He would talk with her again the next day, wouldn’t he?

“Natalia.” He tried again, his voice a little harder, as if he already knew that a softer approach would never work on her. Nevertheless, she didn’t say anything. She closed her thumb and her middle finger around her wrist and pressed her nails against her thin skin, harder than she realized. **“I’m sorry.”**

She hated how honest he sounded.

 

* * *

 

“-Tasha.” She woke up at the end of the word, sitting up using the wall as a support. Her ribs didn’t scream as loud as she was used to, but her skin felt like burning – she knew it meant it was healing. Her eyes were already used to the dark, but she still blinked a couple times after waking up, as if some light would show up if she closed and opened her eyes enough times.

“What?” Her voice sounded too groggy for her liking, it felt out of place. She woke up in a snap ever since she was a little girl. Quietly, softly, slipping out of bed and getting her weapons, never once needing to yawn or more than a few seconds to get herself back on her feet out of the sudden. And here she was, groggy. “What do you want?” Natalia snapped, placing her fingers on her wrist and missing the cold touch of the handcuffs – that was the closer she got to a mother’s touch, that she could remember.

“Are you mad?”

She shifted on her seat, biting down on her lower lip. How could he? How could he know her as Natalia and ask her about what she was feeling?

If she was Dominique.

Emma.

Alexandra.

Caitlyn.

Eliza.

Rachel.

Anyone.

If she was a trophy wife, a waitress, a doctor, an artist. If she were anything but a weapon manufactured in Russia, she would answer it in a heartbeat, with only the hesitation necessary for him not to think that it was a decorated speech. But she wasn’t any of those girls, not right now. She was Natalia Romanova, and the darkness was stripping her away from her defenses. Natalia or… Natasha. He was calling her Natasha, even though she only got the end of it. It was a nickname for her name. An affectionate one. He, most likely, didn’t know, but he was being affectionate towards her. And it made her feel sick. She would snap his neck if she could, because that was what she did to threats, and he sure did sound like one.

“No.” She didn’t feel the need to add anything else. I don’t feel anything.

She wanted it to be true. It was how she was made.

“Okay.” He mumbled, and his voice was awfully weak. Maybe his wounds were hurting – she didn’t know how many there were, but she knew he was in a worst shape than she was. But Belyakov wouldn’t allow his life to slip away like that. Or it could be something else, but she didn’t ask. The last thing she wanted was to sit through another cry session. It was quiet inside the two cells for a few minutes.

**“I’m dead, aren’t I?”** He asked, in her mother tongue, so much emotion breaking through the words he was unable to hide his accent.

**“Why Russian?”**

**“It makes it less real.”** But not less honest. Not with him, at least. **“Am I dead, Natasha?”**

**“My name is Natalia.”** She corrected, not answering his question. Of course, he was not literally dead. He was breathing, and talking. If he had room, he would be walking. He was probably in a lot of pain, and what bigger proof of life than pain?

However, both of them knew that he had no more than a few months to live. She wasn’t sure what they would do to him, but she had got to the conclusion that if he took a bullet through the head, he would be lucky. But it was also unlikely.

She knew he had a fate worse than death in store for him.

Of course, she didn’t tell him that. She didn’t tell him anything.

“Natalia.” He said, and there was a moment in the middle of the word where his voice broke, but by the end of it, he had put himself back together. It was a slip, but he didn’t fall. “Please.” She heard him moving closer to her, and she heard a loud thud against the wall, and she knew he had used too much strength placing his hand there so she would know what he did. “Please. Answer me. Why am I fucking here? Why are you keeping me here? Fuck. Fuck.” He sounded desperate and so bloody honest that she had to look away. Not only look but move away. Not by more than a few inches, but even so, she was pressed against the other wall, staring obsessively at the floor, trying to block out his pleas. He went on for a while.

He didn’t sob this time. He was just miserable. It made her chest hurt. She convinced herself it was her broken rib, it had to be.

“Maybe you’re not even real.” She heard him say after a while. After he had given up in getting something human out of her. Even his voice sounded different. Beaten. Like a dog who got kicked so many times it gave up on standing. This is what silence does to a man. “Fuck, Natalia, what happened to my arm?” He mumbled, almost to himself.

She swallowed dry and placed her hand on her wrist, feeling her bone. She knew the name for it.

Radius.

But no, she didn’t know the name. Once she was a doctor, called Eliza, for a mission, and she, she knew the name of the bones. She had blonde hair and a husband who was off in the war, and she missed him so dearly that men would pity her and women would sympathize with her because most of them were in the same situation. Wheeler pitied her so much that he didn’t even see who killed him.

Her fingers traced to the palm of her hand, searching for the lines she knew that were there. She felt her knuckles, bruised in a way they would never heal – she had hurt too much. Too many noses, chins, eyes and stomachs. She felt her nails and remembered when Rumlow placed needles under them and pushed, pushed, pushed until she cried out, until she begged for him to stop.  
She moved both of her hands to her face. Feeling her cheeks, tracing her jaw until she found her ears. Her mouth, eternal chapped lips from the cold, her nose, her eyebrows. Her hair. Burning, flaming hair. She hated to dye it – even though Natalia wasn’t supposed to hate or love anything.

Her shoulders, her boobs. She was born a girl. Black Widow. She was trained with 27 other girls to murder men as easily as the spider killed her mate. Girl. Woman. Weapon. She wasn’t sure anymore.  
She placed her hands on her – broken, busted – ribs, and the pain brought her back. Pain, the biggest proof you’re alive. If you’re dead, it doesn’t hurt. If you’re dead, it doesn’t hurt. That was supposed to be bad, because if it didn’t hurt, you don’t feel anything. But she was supposed not to feel anything.  
Her waist. Her thighs, how many men slipped between them? How many times did she use her body as a way to manipulate them? She didn’t know what real sex felt like. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to know.

It hurt when she forced her hands to touch her feet, but she had to. She was there. She was whole. She was real, it didn’t matter what the American boy said. She might not be a person, but she was real.


	3. Chapter 3

It felt colder, but she didn’t allow it to bother her. Natalia was, after all, Russian, and she could handle her winter. The bite of the cold would keep her sharp. Every time she started to doubt if she was real, it would remember she was, making her hurt. That was the only way she ever learned anything. Pain. She learned the concept of punishment before she could even process the word love – and she couldn’t grasp that concept either.

Chemicals. That what love was. Just chemicals. So was fear, two things she wasn’t allowed to have, even though sometimes she was so scared she couldn’t possibly breathe, because Belyakov’s stare bit as hard as Mother Russia’s cold, and…

She wasn’t allowed to have these two things, so she didn’t linger on it. Except… Except she did. She closed her eyes on an instinct, shaking her head at herself, biting down at her chapped lower lip until she could taste blood. Metallic, bitter. The smell, the goddamn smell. It filled her nostrils and it remembered her there were others smells in the world beside her own and the cold’s. She licked her lips, cleaning them, even though she wouldn’t be able to see if she was successful. The cut on her lip made her mind stop racing and she was finally able to take a few deep breaths. She didn’t know what was happening to her. She couldn’t place a finger on it, she couldn’t find an explanation, and Rumlow wasn’t there to punch it out of her.

And then she heard a scream. Coming from her side, but it still felt out of nowhere and she got too startled for her taste. She knew it was Barnes before she even recognized his voice, twisted by the fear and despair it was rushing through his mind, because logic told her so. She stayed quiet, but still moved closer to the wall, as if she was waiting to talk to him. His screams echoed on her skull and it made her feel odd. She almost comforted him, using fake words she had learned when she needed to be someone else than Natalia, but she didn’t. She stood there, hand against the wall, only the tip of her fingers touching it, as she heard him breaking and it made her stomach twist as she tried to comprehend why the hell did she care. She had heard tortures before – hell, she had tortured people before, people she, or whoever she was by the time, had bonded for weeks and even months before she showed her true self.

Her hand closed into a fist, in a slow movement, and she blamed the cold because it was easier. She pulled away from the wall, leaning completely against the other one, staring straight into Bucky’s side, even though it made her knees almost touch her chest and it made her wounded leg hurt but she could barely feel it because her ribs lit up in flames, reminding her just how broken they were, and she wanted to scream to but she wasn’t allowed to scream, or break, or cry, she wasn’t like him, and she sure as hell didn’t want to be.

The screams died out. They became lower and lower until they were only sobs. And then silence. Suffocating silence, after so much noise. Her feet pushed against the wall, as if she could push it out and go back home, even though home was a cold room in a cold building in a cold country, even though it meant cuffing her hand to the bed frame and being punished in the same way your comrades punish enemies, even though it meant only being yourself when you were putting a bullet through someone’s head or snapping someone’s neck. That was the only home she knew and she would happily go out of the dark hole they had tossed her in and go back. She would beg. She would beg to Belyakov, even to Rumlow, if she had to. She had done it before, when she had failed, made herself smaller and lesser than she knew she was, than they knew she was. It didn’t lessen the kick she would take afterwards, but she still tried. She should learn. Just as Barnes should learn that screaming doesn’t solve anything. Screaming wouldn’t bring him back home, it wouldn’t give him a new arm. It just made him weaker.

She moved, going back to her old position, a loud gasp leaving her mouth when her ribs were released from the pressure. If it was healing, she had just ruined it. Stupid girl.

“Natasha?” He said, and she could still hear the brokenness on his voice.

 **“There’s no Natasha here.”** She replied, on a hard tone and on her mother language, still in too much pain to think about switching to English. Differently from Barnes, she didn’t let her voice show anything.

“Are you okay?” Bucky insisted on his language, as if he, too, was in too much pain to form sentences in Russian. A chuckle almost came out of her mouth, but she swallowed it. Of course. He has a breakdown and asks about her gasp.

 **“Yes.”** She shifted on her seat, laying her back against the wall and fighting down the need to press her fingers against her ribs. Silence filled the cells against, but this time, not completely. Barnes was still sniffing from time to time, and she was breathing through her teeth waiting for her body to give her a goddamn break. “Are you?” Her voice came out so low, as if some part of her didn’t really want him to hear it. He didn’t reply for a while, and she came to the conclusion he hadn’t, and relief filled over her body. She had done her part – she had tried.

“I miss Steve.” He mumbled, almost embarrassed, and she could almost see him fumbling with his own fingers, as if they were face to face and he needed something to look at besides her.

“Steve? America’s prized Captain?” She asked, too fast, too interested, but it was too late for her to put the words back in her mouth.

Silence was back again, but this time, it didn’t last long.

“Yes.” He tested out the word, as if he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go down that road. “We- We were friends.” His voice came out hard, the words barely leaving his mouth and she had to make an effort to hear him. “Best friends.”

“Oh.” She murmured back, crossing her arms, in a half attempt to hug herself but failing at having the courage to do so, her arms falling back to her side. His best friend. Friend. The word seemed bitter in her mouth. She tried to think it in Russian, and it felt just as bitter. She didn’t have a friend. There, was, once, the other Black Widows. They had trained together, they had ate together and even slept in the same room for years. They all had the same knowledge on how to act normal, how to act the way men from the outside wanted girls to be. One by one, they were gone. Not fast enough, not strong enough, not smart enough. And then there were none. Just her. She wasn’t good at first. She was too small and too weak, and she knew that one more week like that would get her killed. She was disposable, and they wouldn’t blink twice before getting rid of her. So she trained until she wasn’t – and then she kept going until she was the better of them all. She snapped the neck of a few of the girls. How could she call them friends after that?

“I knew him before he was Captain America.” Captain America pre-Captain America. It was a weird idea in her mind. Except for time in the train, she had only seen him propped up. On small propagandas videos with girls dancing by him, punching a fake Hitler on the face and on pictures where he was holding his shield in a way that couldn’t stop a bullet. Studying him from the ambush, she came to learn that he was a puppet. He could fight, and he was useful in the battlefield, but he also spent a lot of time showing off in front of the cameras. That was why she was more effective. While Captain America posed, she trained. While he shot a film, she killed an enemy. She was better.

Then why had she failed?

She breathed in deeply, sharp and put her fingers around her wrist, pressing it hardly. Her fingers pressed together more easily this time. She was losing weight. God, how she missed real food.

When she snapped back, she realized Barnes was talking. She cursed herself from letting herself shut off inside her own thoughts like that – it wasn’t like her. Yes, Barnes’ voice was low, as if he was talking to himself and did not want her to hear a thing, but her normal self would have heard every bit of it. But it wasn’t just low. It was strangled, as if the loneliness or something else that she didn’t dare to name was suffocating him, pressing its fingers around his neck.

“He was such a troublemaker. Fuck. I always had to run after him and clean up his messes.” His chuckle came out, sounding so much like a sob that it was pathetic. But still, there it was. The honesty that burned through his voice and it made her inside hurt just as much as her ribs did. It made her feel sick, out of place. It made her so uncomfortable she wanted to shift in her seat, such a human gesture. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Barnes' honesty – everything about him, in reality – made her feel dangerously human.

“He was…. He is.” He corrected himself, appearing terrified by his mistake. His first choice was in past tense – he already felt disconnected to the world, or at least to the world where Captain America lived. “He is something, I’ll tell you.”

“Shut up.” She said, harshly and in a whisper, not wanting anyone except him to hear her voice. Her feet shifted until they were below her and she was in a crouching position, her muscles burning from the sudden movement. She heard voices from outside. Two. Three? They were talking in Russian, as excepted, and she still couldn’t make out what they were saying. She looked over at the door, and saw the shape of the empty plate she left close to it in the darkness. It couldn’t have been more than a few hours since they had gotten fed – it wasn’t another meal. She wasn’t so lost in time that she would be mistaken about that. Was she?

The doubt came out of her mind when her ribs almost made her wince, a sharp reminder to stay focused.

“What?” He asked, confusion painting his voice. She wondered if he was always this honest or if the darkness was stripping him out of his defenses too.

“Someone’s coming. Shut up.” She hissed at him, moving swiftly towards the door, pressing her ear against it, trying to catch some words. A rush took over her body and it took her a few seconds to realize what it was. Excitement. The break of the dull, dragging routine that she wasn’t even allowed the bittersweet taste of knowing how long had it been made her almost jump in her feet, ignoring the pain in her body just as she always did when she had a mission.

 **“Be ready to sedate him.”** She heard Rumlow say, closer to her side than Barnes'. Her eyes shifted to his side, but all she could see – or at least what she knew was there – was the dark wall between them. Some part of her expected to be able to lock eyes with him, like they were some kind of partners. She barely had time to scold at herself before Barnes’ door opened.

He tried to fight. She heard it. She knew he had no chance. He was hurt, he was weak from all the poor food and he was missing one arm. But he tried, and she couldn’t quite tell if she found it stupid or brave. As if bravery mattered in a place like this.

He struggled for a few minutes, grunting and swearing whenever he could and her body prickled because she had to stay there in the dark, shrunken and ears open. She wanted to go out there and punch someone. It would be Barnes, she told herself. She would’ve punched Barnes, and helped Rumlow.

 _I would have helped Rumlow._ She told herself, as a mantra.

I would have helped Rumlow. I would have helped Rumlow. I would have helped Rumlow, until there was no doubt left in her mind, until the idea of helping the American boy – Bucky, his name is Bucky, but it felt too much as a nickname for her to call him that now - just as it felt when he called her Natasha – appeared downright ridiculous.

She wouldn’t even be able to look him in the eyes. It was too dark inside for that anyway.

 

* * *

 

The silence was more unbearable than his sobs. That was something that caught her by surprise. She sat back in her usual position, having no reason to crouch by the door anymore, and she waited. Pressing against the wall, breathing in a slow pace, the darkness and the lack of Barnes’ noise – his words, yes, but also his shifting and his struggle when he was eating – making her feel a bit lost. All she could hear was the air going out of her mouth and her heart beating, blood pumping through her ears.

Her mind started to rush, jumping from question to question, unable to answer any of them in a satisfying way. She didn’t know anything, and it made her angry. It also made her angry that she found herself half-expecting for Barnes to start talking. About anything, she would take anything, she would answer to anything.

What was wrong with her? She had spent a longer time in complete isolation. Quietly plotting a plan, healing her wounds without allowing herself to lick them. Not once wishing she had someone to talk to, only wishing to get away so she could get back to work, get back to helping sweet Mother Russia. All she wanted was to bring pride to her country. Let it be through training or dancing or- dancing. She was a ballerina once, yes, she remembered. It felt as distant as a dream, not as strongly defined as all the training with the other girls, but the other girls were also ballerinas, weren’t they? If the training was the final product of an artist, well-defined lines and carefully colored, the dancing was a sketch, but it was still there, it was still real.

“Barnes?” She called before she could control herself, and one part of her waited for a response, because he always replied her. But he wasn’t there, and she knew that. She knew that. Why did she even think he would answer?

She felt sick in her stomach. Not even her memories were making sense – not that they ever did, but right now, right now it was worse. She needed Belyakov, or even Rumlow, to tell her what to do, because then she would cope.

Her fingers locked around her wrist and she pressed her nails against the soft skin until the pain brought her back. She closed her eyes and the darkness became complete, since she couldn’t make out the door and the walls anymore. Allowed the air fill her lungs, and she didn’t let it out for a couple seconds. Then she did. The cold hugged her, entering where her clothes didn’t fully protect her and a shiver shook her body. She forced herself away from her memories. It was a dark place, and it wasn’t useful to think about it. Not thinking about the training wouldn’t make her forget what she knew, so she didn’t need to dwell with it.

She focused on Barnes.

Rumlow came to pick him up, which only made sense. He was an important prisoner, and Belyakov would only trust him to take care of something like that. Well, him and her. But she was being kept in the fridge, and for the first time since she was there, she felt a rush of anger towards Belyakov. It wasn’t useful, it wasn’t smart. It couldn’t be smart to keep her there. Her nails dug deeper into her skin.

Dark place.

So Rumlow had taken Barnes. For torture, that was obvious. Why? Information, seemed more likely. But with Belyakov, you could never know. Barnes was a strong, young boy, and there was nothing more useful in a war than that.

On the first days inside the cell, she thought that they would use him as a weapon, but somewhere along the line, it stopped making sense. He didn’t have an arm. He could barely eat – she knew it, she had heard it – let alone hold a weapon and pull the trigger. Her mind slipped once more, snapping from question to question, about Barnes at first, not sure what he was completely capable of, what were they doing to him – what were we doing to him, she corrected herself quickly, not missing one beat after her mistake – and how old was him when he first pulled a trigger.

He couldn’t be older than her. How _old_ was she again?

She closed her eyes, focusing on the air entering her lungs and fighting the urge to count her age on her fingers, pressing her own body against the wall, almost try to climb it up, like if she was able to stand then her mind would stop haunting her. Her training seemed to have lasted an eternity. The only memory outside of it she had was Ivan. Kind, old, Ivan, trying to find a place for her to stay. He was the closest thing to a father she ever had, just as Russia was the closest thing to a mother. And even then, even those memories were only a blur. She was too young – at least that she was sure – to remember details, but it was real. She knew it was. She also knew it was a dangerous memory, one she shouldn’t dwell on for too long. Dangerous and unworthy, after all. The feeling of Ivan’s warm hand holding her own tiny one was not useful for anything. Especially not for killing. And that was all she was supposed to do, it was all that mattered. She hated how she needed to remind herself of that so often.

It wasn’t even a matter of wanting to get out of the cell anymore. She needed it, with every piece of her being. It was toxic. It was poison, getting under her skin and if she was quiet enough she could her insides breaking, one defense tumbling down after another. She had seen massacres before. They weren’t pretty. All the screaming, all the wounded. People without legs and arms, without half their faces, but still alive, yelling in pain and praying to a God they didn’t believe in and that if existed, He had already turned His back on them. The smell of blood and gunpowder making it impossible to escape the horror even if you closed your eyes.

The snow painted red, red, red. The scene filled her mind, the darkness of her cell almost disappearing, but not the cold, the cold was always there. Natalia could feel her mind as a battlefield, and she was being massacred – she just couldn’t tell who was the enemy.

She curled up her body like an infant, her fingers grabbing a gentle hold of her arm, in a half hearted attempt of a hug, sheltering herself from the rest of the world. But her world ended where the wall stood. She didn’t protection, because she was alone. There was no one to hurt her, only herself. And in there, it didn’t seem that much a comfort.


	4. Chapter 4

She knew what she was doing. Her feet moved across the floor, in a fast, but quiet pace. Swiftly, almost impossible to be heard, just as she had been taught to. The halls were long and white, as white as the snow she knew was falling outside of the building. It made her eyes hurt, the back of her head making her hurt from an agonizing pain, but she kept moving. She felt naked with her weapons, missing the weight on her waist, where she kept her belt and all the things in it – she missed the weight of the gun.

Natalia turned a sharp left, sure of where she was going, and then, he was there. Belyakov was there, staring down at her. Taller than she remembered, much, much taller and she felt small. A spider, yes, but one that could be stepped on, crushed under the sole of a shoe and scraped off it with disgust. Her whole body froze while looking at him. Her heart pounded inside her chest, so strong, so desperate that she knew he could hear it. And he laughed, that mean, vicious laugh, that would crawl towards her and choke her. His laughter ended, but it kept resonating through the walls, even though his face was already hardened.

**“You disappoint me, Natalia.”** He said. His voice was deep, low. Calm, in a way that when he screamed, she just knew she would be better off dead. It made her want to shrink herself and disappear. It made her want to cry.

She tried to talk but her mouth didn’t move, unable to articulate anything. She wanted to say sorry or beg him to punish her or just kill her.

Kill me, please, please, kill me, just do it. Please, she thought.

She felt her face wet, the tears streaming down from her cheeks, following a slow, agonizing path, stopping at her mouth just for her to feel the salty taste of defeat and then fall at the floor. _Break all my bones first if you must, make them snap and make me scream, as long as it’s over next._ She was sobbing now, her shoulders shaking with the strength of her whimpers, and her knees barely worked anymore, as she struggled to stand up.

**“You’re not allowed to do that.”** He said, forceful this time, stepping closer to her and she fell onto the floor, curling herself up and hiding her face on her hands. Cold hands, they were always cold. She had killed so many with these hands. She was tired of hurting. Exhausted. She missed dancing. The bitter smell of blood filled in her nostrils and she shut her eyes with more will than before. When she raised her head again, Belyakov was gone. Her head snapped to both sides, looking for him, glancing over her shoulder. She couldn’t find him and the air came back to her lungs. She placed her hand against the wall for support, forcing her legs to move and stand up. The wall felt weird against her palm, so she looked at it, slowly, as if she was afraid to. Blood. In her hands, now all over the wall, and before she realized, it was everywhere. Dense, hot, vicious blood. Sticking to her clothes and filling up her sight, snow painted red again, all over again. She was drowning in blood – she had been drowning in blood all her life. She would never stop. There was no escape.

 

* * *

 

 

She woke up with a jump, almost hitting her head on the wall behind her, her heart pounding as if it was trying to escape. The darkness almost got her by surprise – she had forgotten where she was. Her hands moved to her sides, each one of them touching one of the walls, feeling it up, making sure it was there, that it was real. There were a commotion outside her cell, but she still wasn’t ready to listen to it. She stretched her legs until it touched the door.

**“What are we doing to him?”** A young voice asked, evident struggle painting it. Barnes. Barnes was back.

Natalia forced herself to make a sharp move, only to feel the familiar twinge on her ribs.

**“It’s classified.”** Rumlow replied and the girl stumbled with her words for a moment, as if she meant to say something but decided against it. Natalia sat back with a thud, her hands slipping from under her. She was alright, she thought to herself as she tried to grasp the concept. The sounds across the wall stopped for a second and she felt herself holding her breath before her brain could even process why – well-trained, she thought to herself.

**“Someone’s awake.”** He said, in a cheeky tone that made her stomach twirl with disgust. If she could, she would spit on his face. The closest she got to that was when she sparred with him. She won eight out of ten times. Her hand closed into a fist and she opened it again, stretching out of her fingers. Her muscles ached for the chance of a fight.

**“Black Widow?”** The voice asked again, and she recognized as the girl who brought Barnes in the first place.

Rumlow didn’t answer her. She let out her breath, slowly so it wouldn’t make a loud noise, hoping that they would finish the job and let them be. Let her. She didn’t care about Barnes. Even so, she heard a knock on her door, as if she was in her room and someone was asking permission to go inside.

**“How are you doing, little spider?”** Rage filled her inside, almost blinding her. Rumlow frightened her, but only because he had Belyakov’s permission to do what he pleased – and he was a true sadist. She recoiled herself in the corner of her cell, the further she could from the door, and kept quiet. No, she wouldn’t give him the pleasure.

**“I thought we weren’t supposed to talk to her.”** The girl mumbled, so quietly that she could barely hear it.

**“Do your goddamn job.”** He snapped at her, and Natalia knew he was angry for being questioned. The door of Barnes;' cell opened, and this time, the thud didn’t startle her. She recognized the sound – Barnes wasn’t awake.

 

The wait for him to wake up was long. She chewed on her lip while he didn’t, the teeth sinking into the soft skin, and she could feel the places where it was chapped with them. At one moment, she even moved closer to the wall, knocking quietly with her knuckles against it.

“Barnes.” She whispered, her cheek almost touching the barrier between them. Her eyes closed and she forced a cough. “Barnes.” She said louder this time, but still as insecure.

There was no response, just silence. She closed her hand, her fingers trying to grasp on the wall, earning for some kind of reassurance that he was okay on the other side. Not even her could properly understand what was happening, why she cared so much.

She resigned to her usual place, pulling her knees closer to her body, supporting her head on top of them. She hugged herself and waited.

 

* * *

 

She had been standing in the same position for so long she had almost completely convinced herself she had a purpose. Her legs burned from the effort of not moving, her whole back rushed with discomfort, and her mouth was dry. The only part that was moving in her body was her chest, breathing in and out. She had finally succumbed and created an imaginary mission to keep herself sane. If she moved, America would drop a bomb in their backyard and everyone would die, because of her. If she moved, even if it was only one inch, even if she was a breath too deep or opening her mouth, they would notice her. They would know about the Black Widow Program, and everything was going to go wrong because of her mistake. She could see what would happen to her, if they - who were they by now? Germany? America? The rest of the world? - caught her. A suffocating cage, probes all over her, scientists poking her body, her brain, searching for what would make her go snap. Trying to change her core base, trying to exchange her love and loyalty to Russia to something else.

A good weapon will shoot no matter who pulls the trigger. A perfect weapon won’t. She bit the inner part of her cheek, almost chewing on it. That was why. That was she had a heart beating in her chest. Because they didn’t want a gun that would obey at anyone’s command, a robot that could be opened up and reprogrammed by anyone who had robotics knowledge. They didn’t want a soldier who would fail out of fear or anxiety, or that could betray the cause for love or desperation. They wanted a human weapon, something with just enough conscience that would know who to obey. She was it. Enemies had captured her countless times, and almost every one of them tried to get her to go to the other side – not necessarily the good side, sometimes just opposite of Belyakov – and every single one who had tried had failed. She knew where her loyalties lied. And in some deep part of her being, the part that still cared about what was best for her, she knew that this life she had right now it was the best she could get. The best she deserved. A shiver shook her body almost as if trying to remind her that the best thing she could get was being trapped in a cold, dark cell for weeks.

She heard a scream. Ear-piercing, desperate scream, coming from Bucky. His voice was twisted – he sounded like an animal, not a human.

“Barnes.” Her voice surprised herself. For the first time, she didn’t even weight out talking to him or not. She just did, because she wanted to calm him down in a way she wasn’t used to. Caring, the word shot through her mind once and she let it escape – that wasn’t something she wanted to deal with now.  
Barnes continued to scream, oblivious to her call.

“Barnes.” One more try, louder, a bit harsher, this time. She even knocked on his wall, with enough strength so he would listen, not worrying about being cautious about the outside world – it was easy to forget there was one when he was nearby.

The screaming stopped, but he didn’t indicate any other sign of calming down. He was breathing so loud she could hear it if she pressed her ears against the wall, a raggedy, short breath, as if he had unlearned how to do it properly.

“Barnes, what’s wrong?” Natalia asked, in a soft, comforting voice, one she didn’t know Natalia was able to use and mean it. She didn’t want to say everything was fine – lying to him seemed pointless now – and she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to lie to him, she wanted to tell him the truth, because he seemed to be the only one who would stop and listen, and she didn’t want to waste her time with him with petty lies.

He listened to her, and that was such a simple thing, something that no one had ever done to her. Natalia wouldn’t pour herself over. She wasn’t childish nor stupid. But she wasn’t going to lie either. His response was another raggedy breath, and it sounded as if his lungs weren’t working properly.

“Barnes.” His name sounded more familiar at each time. It didn’t sound like a threat, as Belyakov did. Barnes was almost kind compared to that. Whenever she said it, it was painted with her Russian accent, in a way she tried to fix it every time, but failed to do so.

“What did they do to you?” She shook her head, moving away. We. We. She had to stop putting her and Belyakov and his people in different groups. No matter what, she was still a part of it. "What did we do to you?" She asked again.

Barnes grunted in response, and she approached the wall again.

“What?” Natalia’s voice was soft, and she kept her concern for herself. She could be patient – she could wait as long as he needed to speak, just as she had waited for him to wake up. Once again, she wished to herself that she could see him. Body language was a big part of her training, how to use it in your favor and how to read it, and to see him would help her decide how bad it was. Then she remembered it was useless – even if she knew how big the damage was, she wouldn’t be able to stop it.

“They…” He began, rusty. A cough, two. “It hurt so bad.” It came out as a whimper, a kid asking for help. She waited for more, quietly, hoping that it would get him to speak, but he also felt silent.

  
The silence made her uncomfortable. She could almost taste it, filling up the cell and turning her mouth dry. It hang for a little bit longer – even when she shifted on her seat just to make some noise, and when Barnes tried to do the same, a small whine came out of his mouth. The silence sounded louder after that.

“What are they going to do to me?” He asked, anger shadowing in the corner of his words. Natalia frowned at the wall, feeling her chest tighten up in a way she wasn’t used to.

“I’m in the dark too.” She stated, her voice completely still, as it was before, no indication of the confusion – and maybe even resentment – that she was feeling in her gut.

“You work for them.” He grunted out, and she definitely found it in his voice. He was, indeed, mad at her.

She moved away from the wall, looking at it in disbelief. It bothered her. Her chest felt tighter. It wasn’t because it wasn’t fair – she knew it was. If she had just did her job and obeyed the retreat without bringing any extra weight, Barnes would be dead right now. She could even see it, even though not completely - her already damaged imagination joined with the fact she hadn’t seen anything in the last weeks, months by now, making it hard to get the full picture - but she could see Barnes laying in the ground, the snow covering his body slowly but not once stopping, the place where his arm should be bleeding out until he was dry. What would kill him first? The cold or the blood? It wouldn’t be an easy death either way. Some part of her knew that it would be better than being stuck here.

“I don’t know.” She said, sounding way too defensive. But she didn’t. She had her theories, one worst the other, and they made the side of her head hurt, as if she wasn’t supposed to think about that.

“I can’t believe you’re the defending them.”

“I’m not-“ She started but censored herself. This wasn’t right – she shouldn’t be ashamed of defending them.

**“You’re just a puppet. A puppet tangled in their strings.”** He attacked, the words sounding violent, not desperate. Not broken, but she knew, she knew just how broken he was. If she looked hard enough, she could see it hidden behind his bravery.

She moved, settling herself on her heels, closing her eyes and allowing herself to take a quick breath just because he couldn’t see her. The last thing she wanted was to give him the satisfaction of allowing her emotions to show on her voice. She was angry, her chest burning now, and all she wanted to do was use her knuckles to crush some of his bones.

The thought had crossed her mind – sometimes she felt like one, strings attached to her members, not even needing words to control her, just movements. She would obey to Belyakov’s breath, and sometimes, sometimes she felt so much as a puppet that she wanted to rip her arms off so she couldn’t be controlled anymore. The darkness made her feel more like that than ever. But hearing these words came out of his mouth, in her mother tongue, changed her mind.

**“There are no strings on me.”** She simply said, her voice cold, and for the first time in weeks it sounded as it should. Completely emotionless. She couldn’t believe she had considered that she had cared for him. That she had worried and wished she could make him feel better. He was the enemy, and they would destroy him, rip him open and into little pieces and Belyakov could either sew him back or throw him in the garbage. He could do as he pleased, and she would help. That was her job, after all.

**“I don’t understand, Natasha, you-”** His voice going back to his usual tone, quiet, raspy, as if nothing had happened. She clenched her jaw, pressing her teeth against each other and staring at the wall in a way that would make Barnes coward away if he was able to see it.

**“I’m not Natasha!”** She lashed out, her voice a few tones too high, her anger bursting through her throat. Her hand shot up to her mouth, she pressed her nails against the side of her lips, regretting the lack of self-control, almost recoiling herself because of her slip, wishing that there was someone, anyone to punish her for it.

**“They are hurting you as much as they are hurting me.”** Barnes said, and she hated it. She hated how he sounded stronger after every word he spoke. She felt herself stretching her ear, looking for sign of the broken boy she knew he was, for some remaining of the agonizing pain he was feeling moments earlier. She hated his words, as if she didn’t understand something that he obviously did and wanted her to as well.

The roles were reversed so fast she couldn’t place when it had happened, but now she shrinking herself in the corner of her cell – one position she noticed that Barnes must have spent a long time in – and Barnes being able to form sentences completely. Why? He couldn’t properly talk when he woke up, just scream, scream like a bloody animal and now he was comforting her, and she felt like screaming. She could feel it in her back on her throat, almost reaching her tongue, all the screams she had kept inside all these years.

How many times she wanted to yell in pain but knew she couldn’t, not because she was hidden but because she was not allowed to? Of fear and rage. Rage, she felt so much rage, all the time. Chemicals, the ones she wasn’t allowed to have. Just like a teenager who wants to know how weed feels like, she wanted to be able to feel something without her whole brain shutting down. But that wasn’t her. That wasn’t her job, that wasn’t her point.

She felt tears on the back of her eyes and she did her best to keep them from falling.

Her best wasn’t enough.


	5. Chapter 5

Natalia pressed her palms against her eyes with more strength than she should. It didn’t help at all – the tears were still streaming down her cheeks, hanging from her chin, and she couldn’t stop it. It had been so much time since she had last really cried.

She knew the feeling of tearing up from pain, but she had never allowed the lonesome tear to run down her face. But that was it. She hadn’t allowed it – the crying had begun even after she struggled to keep it inside, her nose burning from the effort and her whole chest in a pain so overwhelming she thought that her ribs had cracked open again, but it took her all her strength and then some before, and even so, she couldn’t fight it.

However, she did her best not to make a sound. Her teeth sank on the back of her hand, keeping the sobs muffled. It was pathetic enough she was like this, she didn’t need anyone – she didn’t need Barnes to hear it. She felt weak, and not only that, she felt like a failure. She had never failed like that, never broken her training like that. A long time ago, when she was still a stupid little girl, so helpless she couldn’t even pull the trigger because she was shaking too much, she would cry herself to sleep, the handcuff hugging her wrist all through the night.

One night, she thought that she couldn’t cry anymore, because she had dried up all of her tears. Stupid Natalia. Again, she had been proven wrong. She let go of her hand slowly, lowering it to her lap, passing the fingers where her teeth once where, feeling the bite mark on her skin. A sob shook her body, and she hid her head between her knees, feeling worse at every minute. She held herself, because there was no one else to, there would never be.

The tears ran through her lips, and when she licked them they tasted like the sea. One thing she had never appreciated. She had used the sea as a hiding spot and as a getaway, she had even used it in her advantage in a fight, but she had never stop to think if she enjoyed the sound of the waves crashing or if she liked the feeling of the sand between her toes, while the water came and went, coming close enough to touch her feet but soon after that leaving. Did she like the sea? The idea of not being able to answer to that question made her body shake a little harder, another sob coming off her mouth as she hugged herself tighter.

“Natalia?” Barnes said, sounding sheepish, almost embarrassed. She rubbed her eyes with her pinky finger, trying to drive away the tears. “Are you-“ He started as she tried to pick herself up, only enough so her voice wouldn’t come out raggedy when she spoke, knowing what he would ask, and she knew that hearing the words _are you crying?_ Would be a punch in the gut.

“I’m sorry.” He changed his mind halfway through, and she tried to understand how he was so composed. He had been tortured, by almost certainly Rumlow’s hand, and she was the one crying. Or maybe she was crashing down so hard that the rest of the world seemed okay, just to mock her, as she deserved.

She frowned, looking at the floor, scrapping her foot against it just to hear the sound it would make. Her sobbing seemed over for now – but not the crying. She bit down on her lip, trying to draw blood from it in an attempt to calm herself down, trying to understand what had happened, not even once considering answering the boy.

Barnes didn’t try again for a few moments, and she thought he would leave her alone to lick her wounds until they were healed. She was focusing on the bite mark, trying to line out it completely when she hear grunts coming from his side, a clear attempt to move closer. He let out a big sigh when he dropped himself closer to the wall, and this time, she didn’t shift closer too.

“Where does it hurt?” He asked, and she felt small. Like a kid who’s supposed to show their bruised knee in search for help. The worst thing wasn’t that – it was that she wanted to tell him. She closed her eyes, and the first answer that came to her mind was everywhere, but she knew that wasn’t true. Her ribs bothered her a little, but not enough that could stop her from moving like it used to. Her leg complained when she moved from the lack of space to stretch, not because of the cut. What hurt was her head. It was pounding, and the more she tried to make sense of who and what she was, of why she did the things she did, the more it hurt. But she couldn’t bring herself to say that, and the biggest part of her didn’t want to.

“Where does it hurt?” She shot back, crossing her arms in front of her chest, almost in protection. The tears had stopped rolling, but she could feel them drying up on her cheek and she didn’t dare to move her hand to clean them.

“Everywhere.” He replied quietly after a while. She took a sharp intake of breath, waiting for me. “It hurts everywhere. Even on… On my arm. That’s not… Here.”

She had felt small before, when he had asked her the exact same thing, but she refused to show it. She only opened her mouth when she was sure she had hardened herself enough to be able to speak without her voice breaking. Barnes was different. He didn’t try to hide – maybe because he was already too over the edge to care about such things.

“Phantom limb.” She murmured to herself, stating the obvious just for the lack of what to say. The idea of the conversation ending and she falling into the silence filled her with dread. Of course, she had stopped crying – she didn’t know how long she had allowed herself to pour open, and she didn’t even want to dwell on that – but she still felt as if she could burst into tears again, hating that she was capable of knowing that. Her eyes were puffy, and she still felt miserable, too splashed open, vulnerable. The last thing she wanted at the moment was to be left alone with her thoughts. She was scared of what they would do to her.

“I feel like a ghost.” He sounded thoughtful, but the sadness was all over his voice, making it painful to hear. There wasn’t a sound of tears on his words, not this time, and she didn’t know if that was good or bad.

Natalia swallowed dry, and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. This was the best she could on the moving area right now. She was exhausted of trying to make sense of her thoughts, of what the conversations she had with the American boy made her feel. She missed how easy her life was. Brutal, yes, and filled with blood and pain, but for most of it, it wasn’t her blood, it wasn’t her pain, and when it was, she was able to ignore it. Now, she felt as if all her blood was being drained for her body, and she couldn’t stop bleeding, not ever. She felt hopeless of ever getting back to who she used to be before the confinement, and maybe that was Belyakov’s plan all along. To break her completely and then toss her away. He didn’t even have to move one finger to do so. How clever.

“I am a ghost.” She replied, almost soft, placing her chin on her knees and staring into the darkness.

“What does that mean?”

It meant she was always in the shadows. It meant she was always lurking, doing what she was supposed to do so swiftly that no one noticed. It meant she was always spying on the living, craving to be one of them. Desperate to belong to their world, to understand what they felt. Disappearing so she wouldn’t be noticed, because that was against the rules. She was a ghost, and ghosts don’t get to be something else.

“Just that.” She answered instead.

“Just that.” He repeated back.

 

* * *

 

She knew that Belyakov was getting close to Barnes' breaking point. Not only they were taking him away more often – using the meals to count, it seemed to be once a day – but they were keeping him there longer. She also knew that they would barely stop torturing him during those hours, just enough for Barnes to survive. Natalia got to the point where she tried to count the time he was gone, to be sure just how much torture he had to take for a day, but the lack of him by her side and the fact that she was waiting for him to get back made time go slower, dragging through the minutes and she couldn’t keep track.

Right now, she thought he wouldn’t come back, that this was it. Belyakov had gotten what he wanted from him and disposed of him just as he always did with whoever wasn’t useful anymore. He had been taken just a few moments after she got a meal and she had just gotten another one and he wasn’t back yet. She tried to eat, telling herself that when she got out – she still couldn’t shake the idea of being out of the cell off her mind, it had to happen one day, didn’t it? – she would need every nutrient she got in there, but the sick feeling in her stomach made her want to throw up just by placing the food on her mouth. She spit the food back on the plate, already moving to leave it near the door to be taken when she stopped herself mid air. It was a stupid decision. If she left the plate untouched, they would know something was wrong with her.

It didn’t matter what she told herself in moments of true panic, Belyakov couldn’t read her mind and didn’t know what was happening to her – not that she could completely name it – but he, he didn’t have a clue. She sat back, placing the plate on her stomach and started to eat, forcing herself to swallow each bit of it.

She waited, patiently, chewing on the inner part of her cheek, for Barnes to be brought back. She knew with every fiber of her being how wrong, dangerous and stupid it was to allow herself to need him. She ignored those feelings though. Every time she thought about it, she felt confused and vulnerable, two things she hated the most and wanted to avoid. Barnes' company had helped her, she was mature enough to admit that, and she liked to talk to him. When he was feeling alright, he was funny. Nowadays, he wasn’t feeling alright for most of the time, but he still did the effort of listening to her and replying appropriately – which she knew wasn’t easy.

And most of all, Barnes needed her in a way she didn’t know it was possible. He didn’t need her abilities or for her to do a kill. He needed her, her, Natalia, or Natasha as he insisted on calling her, to talk to him. _"There isn’t much good about this"_ , he said, after one session, the tenth one, if she was counting right, _"but at least I have you."_

She had stared blankly at the wall in search for a response, heart pounding at her chest, unsure of what to do. Torn between pulling away because it was foreign and dangerous or just letting it be because it made her feel something she had never felt before: it made her feel as she matter, not as a weapon, but as a person. He didn’t demand an answer, but he got one, either way. Hours later, when she was almost sure he was asleep, she whispered back at him, as quiet as a breath, in a way he wouldn’t hear. "At least I have you too."

Whenever she was with Barnes it was easy to ignore how against her own protocol what she was doing was, but now he spent a long time away from the cell, and when he got back, it took him hours until he was himself again. She couldn’t blame him – she just wished it was different.

The sound of people outside the cell startled her, even though she was expecting it. She could hear Barnes struggle to get away of someone’s grip, his screams muffling the sound of the guards’ voices. The door was shut down quickly as soon as they dropped him there, and she heard him wince of pain. His voice was a howl. Not even a cry, but a howl. Brutally broken, so filled with despair that she felt lost for a moment, blinking at the darkness as if it would tell her what to do.

“Barnes.” She said, softly, once she was sure they weren’t close anymore. Once more, she wished she could see him, touch him. Even if it was just a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t answer – she wasn’t sure even if he had heard, she had barely heard herself. She took a deep breath, getting closer to the wall, almost touching it with her face.

“Barnes!” She yelled this time, hoping it would make a difference. He had heard it – his screaming stopped for half a second, but he had started again, as pained as before. Natalia knew it didn’t matter how much she called his name. It wouldn’t soothe his pain. Placing her fingers on her tempers, she clenched her jaw, not even trying to block out his screams. His pain was too real and too close for her to be able to ignore.

Eventually, they died out. Her ears rang, and she could still his sobbing, but that didn’t stop her.

“Bucky.” She called, trying out his nickname this time, that sounded as foreign in her mouth as his last name used to. He moved on his cell, she heard him trying to put himself together.

“Tasha.” He replied, almost as a sob. It made the weight of her shoulders rise a little. He always said it like a prayer. She was growing too fond of it. “I… I-“ She let him find himself on his sentence, not trying to get it out of him before he was ready. “I need to tell you something.” He finally said, his voice still shaky, about to crack open into tears again.

“Okay.” Natalia whispered back, almost as a secret, because it felt like he would share one.

“My name… You asked what my name was.”

“I thought your name was Barnes.” She said, shifting on her seat, her eyebrows frowning just slightly.

“James. My name is James.” He said it quietly, but with a relief she recognized instantly – it was the same she felt when he called by her name. He was the only one who called her that and didn’t make it sound as a threat. When Belyakov or Rumlow called her Natalia, she felt a twist on her gut, because something was surely wrong. Otherwise, she would be Black Widow.

“James.” She repeated, to make him sure that she had understood. “It’s a lovely name.”

“I’m telling you…” His words came out too slow, as if he had trouble remembering them, or he just couldn’t put them in a sentence without thinking a lot about first. “Because I don’t always remember it. Not anymore.”  
She bit down on her lower lip, concerned. They were messing with his memories.

“I won’t forget it.” She promised it, forcing herself to let emotion show on her voice, just so he would know she meant it.

“I know.”

He got quiet then. She swallowed dry.

“Where does it hurt?”

That was the most she could get of him – he didn’t tell her anything else, not about the tortures. It wasn’t something pleasant to talk about, and he avoided it the most he could, sometimes letting something escape.

“Everywhere.” He replied, his voice cracking.

 

* * *

 

She fell asleep, hugging her own arm in some form of comfort, retracted into the corner of her cell, her body as small as she could make it in search for warm. The plan of not falling asleep without being almost sure that a day had passed still worked for her, but she had no idea what time it was outside the cell – she may have miscounted a few meals, but the small sense of control she got off it was worth it.  
However, when she woke up, she had no idea how much time had passed, as usual. It always felt too little – as if she had only slept for ten minutes – but she knew it was a trick of her own mind. There were times she woke up and the meal was already there, and she couldn’t even tell how long had it been – the food was always cold. Even so, when she woke up startled from Barnes’ – James now, a good name for him, one that she felt like it fit him best – noise, she reached to the place where she left her plate to be taken.

Still there, and still empty.

“Tasha?” He called once more, a little bit more eager now that she had moved around enough to make noise too. She realized that she also felt relief shot through her body when he called her that too. “Are you there?”

“Yes. I was sleeping.” She replied, her voice as steady as it used to be. He kept quiet for a moment and she frowned. James didn’t sound okay, and she wondered what had happened. He hadn’t screamed, so it couldn’t be a nightmare, and she couldn’t have slept through someone opening the door.

“What’s wrong?” She was almost holding her breath.

“I can’t- Remember…” He started, and she waited, not so patiently this time. “My name.”

She sighed quietly, her chest tighten up. Of course, she had known for the longest time that since the moment she had found him wasting away on the snow, he had no chance of returning to his old life, but right now, it felt as if he had passed the point of no return – and she couldn’t but feel guilty.

“Your name is-“ She began, but stopped mid-sentence. Her door was opening and she closed her eyes the minute the light came in, almost blinding her after so many weeks on complete darkness. The fresh air felt like she got a pair of new lungs. Someone shadowed over her. Through the harsh light she saw Rumlow standing at her door. Her heart was pounding on her chest and she needed all of her self control to not move backwards, away from him. Her arms were shaking from the strength of it and she did not dare to look at James’ wall.

“Tasha?” She heard James say, quietly. It took the best of her not to shush him. Rumlow couldn’t hear him – he couldn’t know. She felt like she had forgotten how to breathe and she still couldn’t properly see, the light hurting her eyes, and it wasn’t even natural, for what she could process.

He leaned in towards her, and once he was near she could see the sickening smile on his lip, grabbing her arm roughly and forcing her to stand. Natalia didn’t expect her legs to refuse to work, but she was stupid not to. Her muscles were weak and her knees weren’t doing not even half of their job. She almost fell the moment he let her go, and used the wall as a support to stop it, since she knew that him making her stand would be the most of help she would get.

**“Vacation’s over, Black Widow.”** He said, baring his teeth at her, his canines sticking out.

“Don’t leave.” James sounded desperate, as if he had just realized what was happening and she only heard it because she was paying close attention to any sound that came from his cell. It was the last thing she heard before she began to move, a whimper of a request she could not obey.

While she followed Rumlow and Belova down the hallway, doing her best to stare ahead, walk straight and not allow her confusion to show – it had been so long since she had tried to hide something in her expression – all she could think about was how James didn’t know what his name was.


	6. Chapter 6

There was something wrong with the world. Her ears missed the silence – missed having only James’ voice to break it. Now, she heard noises all around. In the bathroom, during meals, in the hallways. Late at night, with her eyes shut and her wrist hurting from hanging above her head, trying to get back to her side even though she knew it could, she had to block out all the noises to fall asleep.

There were times that all she wanted was to block the world out during lunch, but she knew better. Natalia could be beaten down, but she wasn’t damn stupid to let it show. She saw Rumlow’s tiny smirk when she was training, the corner of his lips arching every time she made a mistake. Anything she could do to not give him the satisfaction, she would. However, it didn’t make her feel any better. She felt disconnected, her body taking longer to react than it should when she was sparring. The lights threw her off. For the past few days, she didn’t flick the switch on her room until she was fully dressed. She didn’t want to be back in her cell. Being able to stretch her legs and take a shower, even if cold, was better than she remembered.

She just wished she didn’t feel as if something was sitting on her chest.

The food was a tiny bit better than the one they were giving her before, but she had to eat at the dining hall, dozens of people around her, soldiers who talked too much and laughed too loud. She ate alone, as she usually did. People were afraid to sit near her since before she could remember, and she was glad that she was left in peace. Her eyes were fixed in her food, as she forced herself to not show what was growing in her mind. However, this effort made her startle when someone sat in front of her. Belova. She still thought the girl was too young to be there. But then again, so was she, back in the day.

**“Hello.”** The blonde said, smiling. Her hair was shorter now. She narrowed her eyes, trying to remember if she had short hair when Natalia left the cell, but nothing came to mind – she wasn’t paying attention on her at that moment. James’ last request still rang in her mind. Don’t leave. It made her stomach twist and suddenly, she didn’t felt like eating anymore. He was still there, she knew. She knew that he was being dragged out of his cell every day and taken somewhere for his treatment.

Treatment, that was what Rumlow called it. As if he was a patient with an IV in his body, pumping something that would make him feel better. They still hadn’t let her seen her – and she still hadn’t asked. She knew what it would sound like, and the less Belyakov knew of her relationship with James – whatever it was, whatever she felt about it – the better it was.

**“Good afternoon.”** She replied quietly, bringing the fork to her mouth and looking at her properly. Yelena had built more muscles, her clothes hugging her skin better, and she could spot a cut on her eyebrow. Again, she frowned. It didn’t seem like the kind of bruise you get from sparring. Had she been on a mission? But she was still so young. However, the battlefield missions were running out, and she knew that the only ones still been issued were the small ones. She bit down on her tongue, not daring to ask it. In the last few days, she had chosen to keep quiet more often than not. She was stepping on thin ice, and the last thing she wanted was to break it. Maybe she had proven herself worthy in the last couple months, while Natalia was locked up. It didn’t matter anyway – she would just have to swallow her curiosity.

**“Can I eat with you?”** Natalia shrugged in the response, biting down on her piece of bread, while Belova started to eat what she had almost finished. **“I was dying to talk to you for weeks. The Black Widow herself.”** Her voice sounded almost dreamy, as if Natalia was some sort of movie star.

**“Call me Natalia.”** She said, in a calm tone that didn’t depict her inside thoughts. It was out of a whim, what she said. Everyone around there called her Black Widow or Romanova, and she missed the sound of her name more than she thought she would. The only person in there who might call her Natalia was Belyakov, and that didn’t soothe her at all – it only made her heart stop beating.

The girl seemed shocked, but she got back to her usual expression in seconds, in a manner Natalia knew very well.

**“Of course, Natalia.”** She said, a small smile on her lips. Her name didn’t work as she thought it would and it took the best of her not to finish the conversation right there. **“I’m being trained, you know.”** She could almost taste the pride in Yelena’s voice. Was she ever like that? She should have been. Since she was locked up, however, it became harder to remember that feeling of wanting to fight for her country. She was just tired, exhaustion hanging from her bones even when she was laying down. She wanted Mother Russia to tuck her in, not send her out to play.

Natalia almost shook her head to drive away the thoughts, but controlled herself before that.

**“What for?”** She asked, after a moment, when she realized Yelena was waiting for her question.

**“To be like you.”** The statement was matter-of-factly, a hint of viciousness on the girl’s voice, hidden away by her sweet tone. She shifted only slightly, as if the movement would help her see the girl better.

She could see the potential she had, how dangerous and deadly she could be if she wanted to. Just like her. Her sentence could mean anything. Maybe they were training her to be a spy. Soldiers weren’t that needed anymore – she found a paper dating a few weeks back, front page stating the war was over, no one had the decency to tell her, and she knew it was because there was still no use for her to know, which bothered her deeply. It meant they weren’t thinking about her for a mission any time soon. She was still being kept in the dark, but not literal this time. – but spies, spies could be more effective than an whole army, if used right. But there was a tiny chance something else was going on. If there was one thing Belyakov was good at, it was replacing damaged goods.

She had slipped, badly, letting Captain America get out alive of the last chance they had – even though he had died, from what she read in the same paper – and Belyakov locked her away for months. A small pit of panic started to rise on the side of her stomach, climbing up to her chest. She thought she had spent so much time in lockdown because there was no use to her outside, no mission they needed the Black Widow in. But maybe there had been. They just assigned it to someone else. Someone up for the job. Someone like Yelena.

**“Like me?”** She asked with a chuckle, sounding at ease. Not worried at all. She didn’t even let herself frown at her.

**“Yes, like you.”** Yelena leaned forward, over her plate, one strand of her hair escaping from behind her ear. Natalia leaned as well, only slightly, her skin prickling with anticipation, hoping the girl was just making a fool out of herself, thinking any spy would reach the point of being a Black Widow. There were twenty-eight, now there was only her, she wasn’t as replaceable as that, was she?

**“Black Widow Ops.”** She whispered, the words well marked, her mouth popping at the ops.

She swallowed dryly and got back to her place, gathering her fork back up. Her mind rushed while she led her to believe she was just not interested enough to stop eating to talk about it. Years, it took her. To get to her place, to be who she was. It wasn’t as simple as getting a girl and training her, it had more to it, more than could be done in a few months. But they could have started it. Yelena did look like she was training harder than she ever did, with the cut on her eyebrow and the strength of her body. If she stripped right there, Natalia knew she would find more bruises throughout her body.

**“How’s the training?”** She asked, gazing at her blankly. Taken aback, the girl put her loose hair behind her ear again. Natalia almost showed her teeth – she still did more mistakes than she knew, showing her emotions too much, way more than she was supposed to do. It was obvious that the response she gave was not the one the other was expecting.

**“Good.”** She replied at first, but then her brow furrowed. **“Hard.”** It came out more forceful this time, and Natalia kept watching her face carefully, trying to read her. **“But the warmth of my parents makes up for it.”**

It sounded rehearsed, a line Natalia had heard thousands of times. She bit down on her food, while Yelena came back to hers, looking a bit confused. Did she even have parents? Natalia remembered thinking that way too, how the love for her country and the warmth of her… Parents. The thought felt bitter in her mouth and she almost spit out her food. Her parents were dead before she had ever known them. Why did she ever think the opposite? She didn’t know the warm touch of a parent. Her hand closed into a fist around her fork, the metal pressing against the palm of her hand as she tried to focus on a small point of dirt on the table. The warmth of her parents. The warmth of Yelena’s parents. The warmth of every other girl who had perished through the training’s parents. She remembered thinking that, as a prayer, every day, while she trained, while she danced, to keep going. It kept her going. She felt a twinge on the back of her brain and her eyes slipped closed for a moment and when she opened them again, Yelena was looking at her confused, but she wasn’t really looking at her.

It seemed to go past her.

She wanted to run. To her room, or outside, to feel the snow below her feet and the cold wind on her face. To James. She wanted to talk to James. Did he even know his name was that? Did he even know he had a name?

She blinked a couple times. Yelena did too. And then she smiled.

**“I’m going to be just like you.”**

She started to feel calm again, the air entering through her nose and leaving through her half opened mouth. Natalia couldn’t even remember what was troubling her. She raised one eyebrow to the girl.

**“And why would you ever want that?”**

 

* * *

 

Her muscles burned by the time she tossed herself in bed at night, but she knew it was worth it. She had been training more than she had done in years, starting right after breakfast and going through the end of the day. Natalia told herself over and over that she was doing just that – pushing her limits, her ribs hurting as if to remember her she wasn’t as 100% as she wanted to think she was – because she wanted to get back to where she was before being trapped in a cell, and she was almost there, but there was also something else.

The thought of James was filling her mind in a way she wasn’t used to. She worried about him so much her chest felt smaller, her heart being pressed against her ribcage, beating so hard against it she thought one of them would just eventually break. It was terrifying, that feeling that made her stop breathing for a moment because it was too much to take to bother with air. She wasn’t ashamed to acknowledge that – it hurt and it frightened her. But she had been in that position many times before, even if she hadn’t admitted it before. Hurt and scared, but she never let that stop her from getting the job done.

Of course, just as all those times before, the pain was physical. A bullet in her leg or her bones hurting from the cold. Never this. Feelings made her weak, she had heard in her training too many times. She had repeated this to herself, even more.

She didn’t understand it until now, because she had never felt much before. Natalia had been blocking out her feelings ever since she was handed over the program, and James did a cruel thing by opening that door – she couldn’t tell who bore more guilt. Him for doing so, or her for allowing him.

However, she wasn’t going to let them be right. She wasn’t going to let herself become weak. So she trained. All day through, stopping for only a short while before she was back. Sometimes she spared with Yelena – the girl used the same moves as her. Used her thighs as a form a weapon more often than not, but Natalia could still take her down. She didn’t use all of her strength. The last thing she wanted was to hurt the girl, even though she felt that it was unavoidable. If she wasn’t going to hurt her, Belyakov would be sure to do it.

The best way to forge a weapon is to beat it into shape. Yelena, however, seemed so focused on becoming like her, sometimes even sounding as if she wanted to be better than her.

She ignored the small hints Natalia tried to give her.

With Rumlow, however, she used all she had. She didn’t hold back, attempting every move, every trick, to get him on the floor. He was, unfortunately, stronger than she was, his hand closing into a fist around her face more times than she would like to admit. He, just like her, was trying to hurt her the best way she could. She could almost feel how displeased he was about her punishment not falling into his hands. Rumlow was a wolf, always preying on her, waiting for her to slip so he could eat her whole, to use his sharp teeth against her skin. She knew just how he enjoyed inflicting pain on her – especially when she was strapped down and couldn’t fight back. He didn’t get what he wanted, and so their spars became a real fight, rage flickering on his eyes while hers burned cold.

It was an exhausting routine, which was good to keep her mind of James. The moment she allowed herself to rest, her brain would start trying to create an escape plan – a rescue mission, one thing she never thought she would be considering – plans she knew she wouldn’t be able to follow through, that even if they worked, and maybe they did, there was no future for them after that.

On one particular afternoon that she had left the gym to walk around the facility, James’ scream, so familiar by now, pierced through her ear. She stopped completely still on her place, stretching her ears, her heart beating faster than before, her whole body paying attention. It came from her left, a part of the building she was rarely in. Her legs began to move, one step at a time, following the screams that came one after another. Worse than the ones in the cell, more desperate, so painted with pain that it seemed as if James would never feel anything else in his life.

They didn’t even have the decency to torture him in a sound proof room. They let his screams echo through the hallways; let everyone who was passing by hear them. Maybe to make them know what they could do. Maybe to humiliate James, even though he was unable to know what was happening. Most likely, it was just out of spite. She walked fast, doing her best not to start running, her head held high, even though she flinched slightly at each scream. Her hand was hovering over the doorknob of the door where the screams were coming out of before she held herself. One step after the other, so slowly she almost lost her balance, she walked away from the door, not moving her eyes from it.

It wouldn’t help any of them if she burst in there without being invited. It would be just another weapon in Belyakov’s arsenal to hurt both her and James. She couldn’t pinpoint what made her feel different at that moment, and spent the rest of the day training with her pistol, the sweet weight of it on her hands, the feel of it against her skin. She shot at targets what felt like hundreds of time, but she didn’t bother to count. The only thing she was focusing on was on her shooting. She breathed in deeply each time, aiming with more care than she needed to, just because it kept her mind busy. She shot until she felt calm enough to allow her brain to turn itself on again.

Late at night, no handcuffs on – she had been allowing herself one night per week free of the metal – she realized what was different. She hadn’t thought only about herself. Natalia had thought if her actions would help James too, and no one had ordered her to do that. The first thing she thought was how dangerous it was, almost automatically, her hear throbbing on her chest, her hand almost reaching for the handcuff as if that would work as some kind of penitence. After a few minutes, however, it felt good. The feeling of having someone to care about, and not only something, made her feel weirdly alright, in a way she couldn’t remember feeling before.


	7. Chapter 7

She woke up with a knock on her door, sitting up straight in a second. Her hands searched for the key to her handcuff without taking the eyes off her door, still startled by her nightmare, her heart pounding against her ribcage. She felt under attack, the back of her eyes hurting while she stared at the entrance. The knock, however, was soft, quiet, almost impossible to hear. If she wasn’t such a light sleeper, she might have missed it. The key felt cold against her hand and she closed it around it, bringing it to her handcuff, placing and turning it, the metal releasing her wrist.

 **“Come in.”** She called out, her fingers moving around her bruised skin while the door opened. Through the light outside the hallway, she could make out Yelena’s form – slim and tall – but before she could say anything, the girl flicked the lights on. Her eyes shut close while she quickly moved back, as if in look for protection. While she still couldn’t see anything, she noticed that Yelena had turned off the lights. She opened her eyes back again and looked at the girl, being able to make out her face in the darkness but not her expression completely. Natalia kept quiet, letting go of her wrist in a slow manner, so she wouldn’t notice. She wanted to know what was happening.

Why had they sent her in her bedroom so early in the morning? They usually waited for her to wake up, since she always did at six in the morning, to tell her what they needed. One small glimpse of hope filled her chest. Maybe it was a mission. Maybe they trusted her enough, or just needed her, she didn’t care each, to send her out again. Yelena was send there to fetch her because of the sick way Belyakov has fun. She was being trained to replace her, but there was no need anymore, so he told her to go there just so Yelena would know she was being tossed aside, without him having to directly tell her anything. The girl didn’t look shaken, but she knew better than that to assume that meant she was wrong. The main thing she had learned, and that Yelena probably must had too, was how to cover her emotions. Maybe she was getting better at it.

 **“Belyakov wants you in the Winter Soldier program.”** She said, toneless, looking straight at her, and she didn’t look away either.

 **“Now?”** Natalia made her best effort to sound composed, but the words made her heart pound faster. Winter Soldier. She had heard these words before, countless times, over and over. Through Rumlow’s mouth a few times, only one of them directed to her, but mostly, she heard the guards talking – or better yet, whispering. Trading thoughts on the matter, they talked about unbelievable stories of what was going inside that program, the only moment they were quiet on the dining hall.

They didn’t know much, Belyakov wouldn’t tell something as important as that to every minor guard in the facility, but they knew this: it was an American boy, the one who always by the side of Captain America. She heard everything they said, eating slowly on the table next to them, pretending to be deep into her own world but her ear paying attention to every word, trying to separate what was true and what was mindless imagination, since it was the only way she could heard anything about James.

 **“Yes, get dressed.”** However, she didn’t move, just stared down at her clothes. Natalia got up, slowly, waiting for the girl to leave or at least turn away, but she made no movement to. She held in an exasperated sigh, and began to search for her clothes, that looked too much like Yelena’s. Changing in front of someone didn’t bother her – her body had been stripped away, poked and used by so many people, so many men, most of all, that standing on her underwear in front of someone like Yelena didn’t made her uncomfortable. The cold hit her body while she put on a shirt, a small shiver going down her spine. She refused, with some sort of pride, to sit on her bed while sliding inside her pants, and when she closed the upper part of her uniform, she finally looked at Yelena, who was in the same position.

 **“Shall we?”** She asked, tying up her boot and getting up straight once more.

 **“I wear a colorful shirt underneath.”** Yelena stated, out of the blue, and turned to the door. She didn’t answer to that, and followed the girl down the hallway, half expecting her to go through the path she did a few weeks, where she knew James was being tortured in some twisted way of treatment. However, Yelena went to the other way. After a moment of confusion, she followed, taking a larger step to be where she was before. Yelena, hopefully, hadn’t notice.

While they walked, she looked around, trying to spot something that hinted her where they were going – all the hallways did look the same, but she could always find something to grab on so she would recognize. It took her a few minutes, more than she would like to, but she realized where they were, and it only seemed obvious after that. The last time she was there, she was blinded by the light and the pain, she felt like a beaten animal, unable to walk without limping. Now, she could keep her head high without much effort, and her body obeyed her every command, but the sicken lighting of the place made her feel small.

The cells looked smaller on the outside. There were four, but she knew that only one was being used. Her eyes went straight to the one that was by the side of hers.

He was quiet and for one small second, she hoped he was dead. Deep down, she knew that was what he wanted as well. For it to be over. She knew the feeling well. James deserved at least that. He deserved to die peacefully, and to be buried by the ones who cared and loved for them – his family, maybe, but she didn’t know anything about them. Captain America, perhaps, but he was already gone, buried at the sea. James deserved more than to be tore apart and rearranged into a weapon. He deserved more than what she got.

Her eyes fell into the girl next to her, already hardened by her training, seeming so different from the one she knew before everything went wrong, but still with her blonde hair and eager eyes. She too, deserved more than that.

 **“I thought Rumlow picked him up.”** She said, while Yelena looked through the keys.

 **“You’re replacing him. He’s in the room already. Got tired of carrying him around, I suppose.”** She said, sharply, her discontent with Rumlow showing slightly on her voice. The girl placed the key on the doorknob, looking at Natalia for a moment. **“He can react badly.”**

 **“I know.”** She nodded – she knew his struggling too well, through sound. – however, one part of her hoped he wouldn’t fight her. She knew it was a useless thought. James probably didn’t remember how she looked. Maybe he didn’t even remember her voice. Yelena opened the door, and she peeked inside.  
She couldn’t help but step back when she saw him, not even considering holding it back from Yelena.

James was curled up against the wall – the wall they talked through – looking at its direction, but his eyes weren’t exactly focused. They were clouded, lost. He was thinner than she remembered him to be, when she saw him on the snow, but then again, she didn’t expect any different. James looked more than sick – he looked as if he was halfway to death – his skin so pale it was almost transparent. He was shirtless and she could see all sorts of marks over his chest, red and purple, even some cuts now and then.

When he shifted, finally, to look at them, she saw something she wasn’t expecting. His arm – the one that got ripped off – was there. Not his real arm, but a metal one. A prosthetic one, too big and muscular to his weak and beaten body, as if they had modeled it with Captain America’s body in mind, not James’. His eyes widened when he saw Natalia, and she lunched forward to grab him by his other arm before he could say anything. She used her strength to raise him up, and he felt heavier than he looked, his body too limp as he stared at her in disbelief and confusion. She looked at Yelena, who quickly took her place by his other side, holding him by his arm. She looked at the junction, the place where flesh met metal, and while it did look like someone placed a great care into it, it wasn’t like the prosthetic she had seen before, the ones people could remove whenever they wanted. It was sewed on his body, the scar looking painful still.

 **“Be careful with his arm.”** She warned Yelena, walking down the hallway.

 **“It won’t- This way.”** She showed when they reached a turn. **“It won’t come off.”**

Of course it wouldn’t. If there was one thing that their doctors and scientists were, it was efficient. It wasn’t her concern. Every time Yelena moved his arm to get a better grip, he winced with pain, looking at Natalia with the corner of his eyes, recognition almost appearing on his face, but never enough for her to be sure that he knew who she was – maybe he just knew he should knew who she was. She could see he was making an effort, but she wouldn’t dare to say anything to soothe him, not with Yelena standing so close.

 **“He’s in pain.”** She stated, trying to keep her voice from sounding to concerned. She hated talking like that – as if he wasn’t there, or as if he was too stupid to understand what they were saying – she knew how bad it felt when it was done to her, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She had to act as she was supposed to, if she wanted to help him in some way. If there was even a way. Yelena nodded with her head at the direction they had to turn, and she followed, already knowing where they were going – even though she wasn’t supposed to. A smirk trespassed Yelena’s face.

**“And he’s in for a lot more.”**

 

* * *

 

It was harder than she ever thought it would be to keep her face straight while they carried him down the hallways. He didn’t struggle, or at least, not as much as she thought he would, from what Yelena had told her. Every time he started to move, his eyes would eventually fall on Natalia, and his expression would change completely. She couldn’t quite explain what it was. Confusion and sadness, maybe even a hint of betrayal painted his face in a way she had never seen before – in a way that she didn’t think it was possible, she didn’t know eyes and lines could show so much emotion – but it made some sense, because of course, if there was someone who was able to say more without words than using them, it had to be James. Sincerity poured from his words back on the cell, and now from his gaze. She wondered if he looked like that when they were in the dark. Maybe it was better they couldn’t see each other.

It got even harder when she watched Rumlow and his dogs grab him as if he was a doll, an animal, and strap him down in a table. Panic filled James’ eyes as they got him held in place, but he was too weak and too late to beat them. She didn’t look away through all the process, standing by Yelena while they did their job, her arms crossed in front of her chest while she felt sick in the stomach.

 **“He didn’t fight.”** Yelena stated, once Rumlow stepped away, cleaning his hands on his pants, as if James was dirty to the touch. He looked at both of them, a sly smirk appearing on his lips when he looked at Natalia, and she nodded politely in response, staring him coldly. **“You think it’s working?”**

 **“It is indeed.”** A short man stated, joining the conversation without hesitation. She gazed at him, pretending to be politely interested in what he had to say, but rage burning on her inside. He was short and small, too tiny to be a soldier, and the pretentious pose he held showed he was a scientist, no doubt. He looked like the kind of man who has fun using human beings as test subjects.

She looked over his shoulder, at James, strapped down on the table in a way that made him stand up, breathing heavily, his jaw tighten in a way she knew very well that he was trying not to show his fear. She remembered the time when she needed that to keep her emotions from pouring open, for everyone to see. How many beatings she had to take until she didn’t need anything to keep her face blank. Maybe they were teaching him that too.

**“A few more sessions and he’ll be good to go. We’re not far from breaking point.”**

**“And what would that be, exactly?”** She asked, politely, the words coming out of her mouth as easy as if she was asking what they would have for lunch. As if she didn’t care. He looked at her, arching one eyebrow in curiosity. **“What are we doing to Barnes?”** She pressed, the sentence carefully structured so it would sound like she was asking about a regular prisoner.

 **“We don’t call him that anymore.”** Rumlow snarled at her, looking over his shoulder back at James, searching to see if he had heard. **“It’s called Winter Soldier from now on. Weapons don’t really need a name, do they, Black Widow?”** He teased, clicking his tongue in a vicious way, waiting for her to lash out on him, but she just nodded.

**“No, they don’t.”**

She had been right. Since the beginning, when she thought that maybe she wouldn’t be punished as bad because James could be useful, she had been right. Of course, Belyakov wouldn’t miss a chance of make her miserable, of place her better onto his grip, to humiliate her, it didn’t matter what the mission would bring, she still had failed it on the first place.

They began to move, the scientist going closer to his monitors while Yelena stood beside Rumlow as a trained pup, watching James with a lust in her eyes that had nothing to do with sex. The powerful Mother Russia demonstrates her powers again, and how happy the girl was to be allowed to watch it. She also moved, only a few seconds later than them, standing beside her, not daring to be across, afraid her expression would flicker for a second and they would notice, and they would know, and then they both might as well say goodbye to their sanities because it would be stripped away from them. The only thing she still had left. Her sanity.

There were days she thought she didn’t own her mind, or even her memories, but she was sane. It was almost stripped away from her, when she was locked up. She could feel it leaving her mind, slipping from her fingers as if she was trying to catch water. Even when you think you’re holding it, it’s getting away. Of course, they took her from there at the right time, as if Belyakov knew exactly when she would break, just like a torturer knows when to pull their victim’s head from the water, knows how to hold them down just enough that the water makes everything burn, enough for them to hope to die, because then it would be over and then allow them to breathe air again. She felt like that. She even wished it had been actually that – she had learned how to endure physical pain. Maybe that was why Belyakov’s punishments had become psychological.

She clenched her jaw when James began to scream, any ounce of dignity gone by the moment the pain began. The scientist little fat finger pressed down a button, not making any other effort to inflict so much suffering on him. There weren’t tubes attached to his body, and Rumlow didn’t seem to have any weapons on his hands – she was sure he wasn’t that happy about it – but the machine was pressed against both sides of his head and she shuddered at the thought of what he was feeling. They all looked at him, blinking only when it was necessary, as if he was an artist in an amazing performance, a star, but his only lines were screams. She couldn’t look away, but she would have given the world to be allowed to.

 **“Can’t we gag him?!”** She asked, sounding more exasperated than she wished, but not being able to keep her outrage hidden. The eyes shifted to her, and the button stopped being pressed, James heavy panting, failed attempts to get back to a regular breathing rhythm breaking the silence.

 **“Why?”** The scientist asked and her whole body tingled with the need of answering his question with a fist. Disgusting little man. All of them were disgusting. Even her.

 **“It’s unpleasant to hear his pathetic screaming.”** She shot back, viciousness coloring her voice in the best way she could manage, watching as James stared at her with the corner of her eye. At least that she could give him. Take the satisfaction of them hearing his howls.

 **“She’s right.”** Yelena said, quietly, looking at Rumlow with the corner of her eye, as if he would go running tell Belyakov about any slip of her. It wasn’t a empty concern, of course. **“It’s starting to get annoying.”**

Rumlow sighed, disappointed, probably because he would have to find another way to fulfill his sadistic needs, and reached for a gag they had, stuffing it on James mouth with certain violence. He didn’t pull away, placing one hand on the chair and leaning closer to him, until there was no way James could look away from him. He began to talk with him, in English, probably because they didn’t know he knew Russian, fast and stern, just like a father lecturing a troublesome kid. She couldn’t understand much he was saying, but it was obvious he was trying to convince him of something, saying strings of words so quickly that she was sure James barely even had time to proceed it. Smooth, manipulative, whispering lies into his ears, no doubt.

It was a few minutes until he stepped away, and she looked back at the scientist, that was pressing another button now. James seemed in pain, but most of all lost, and the muffled sounds that came from his mouth didn’t seem to try to be the loud scream she had grown accustomed to hearing.

 **“That machine… It’s a real wonder.”** Rumlow said quietly, looking at it as if it was a masterpiece.

 **“As such?”** She asked, skeptical, knowing that would get him talking even more. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and looked at him.

**“Wipe out memories.”**

**“That’s what we’re doing?”**

**“Can’t have a Russian weapon in love with America, can’t we?”**

We have you. She thought almost immediately, but bit her tongue.

Wiping out memories. That sounded familiar. That’s why he couldn’t remember his name. Maybe he didn’t even remember his dear Captain America anymore. And that was why he looked at her as if he knew he should know her, but couldn’t quite place her. She was the most recent memory on his mind, one piece of the puzzle that was still there after all of the others were throw in the gutter.

 **“Not just that. We can replace memories all together.”** He bragged, tongue clicking.

_The warmth of my parents._

Natalia blinked, taking a few steps back from James, crashing onto a metal table, the noise echoing on the room. Her heart thumped on her chest as she looked at Yelena looking for some sign of distress. She looked at the machine, and at James, back at Rumlow, who looked at her as if she was a bomb ready to go boom.

 **“I’m not feeling very well. Excuse me.”** She blunt out, moving away from Rumlow’s attempted grab, almost slapping his hand away and going for the door, her legs guiding her fast through the hallways while it hurt for her to breathe. The machine. It looked familiar. It looked more familiar to her than her parents’ face – what were her parents face? She took a turn wrong and changed her way abruptly, almost running down the hallway. Pushing the door with more strength than necessary, almost falling into the bathroom, tripping on her own feet, feeling so goddamn small and stupid. Natalia reached for the toilet and puked, even though there was nothing on her stomach that day.


	8. Chapter 8

She could still feel the bitter taste on her tongue. A strong, awful taste, that filled all of her mouth and her throat, going up until her nose. She brushed her teeth for what it seemed hours, aggressively, until she could feel the taste of blood mixed with it. She spit on the sink, the red pulsing on her eyesight, and she reached for the tap, opening it and watching carefully while the water washed it away. The sound was relaxing, but not enough to raise the tension from her shoulders – she doubted anything would be.

Something was off. She couldn’t quite place what, and because of that, she couldn’t fix it. She had been feeling weird, disconnected, since she left the cell. Before that, even, but it was easier to find other reasons for feeling insane when you’re locked up in a dark cubicle. Now she didn’t. She was back on routine, back to obeying orders and keeping her voice down and her head high, and still she could hear herself tick like a time bomb. Everyday something happened, something that would make her feel as if something snapped inside of her, and she would go on for hours thinking about it, until her head hurt, until she felt like crying, just as she did back on her cell, sobs shaking her shoulders and not being able to properly breathe, and then she stopped thinking about it, and she looked for a spar or she went out on the snow or she just took a cold shower, shivering under the stream of water, the cold cutting through her skin until her teeth clanked together, as some sort of punishment.

She was still drying her hair with a towel when Yelena came in, and she didn’t move her eyes to meet her gaze, staring blankly at the wall, carefully controlling her breath so it would seem that she was at ease.

 **“I had to take the American to his cell. By myself.”** She complained through gritted teeth, staring down at her as she finished using the towel, letting it rest against the back of the chair.

 **“I was ill.”** Natalia stated, her voice dry and short, not giving any room for the girl to reply, hoping that she would understand the message and leave her alone, and mend her own wounds. She couldn’t ask for a spar, especially because she appeared to be mad at her, brow furrowed and eyes flashing at her, but mostly because she just told the girl she wasn’t feeling good. It would be better if she left her be.

 **“Get better.”** She ordered, straightening her back again, looking around her room almost in examination manner, and then turning to gaze at her. **“We’re taking him again tomorrow.”**

She looked at her, properly, for the first time since she entered the room. For one brief moment, the thought of asking her for help appeared on her mind, as fast as a lighting crossing the sky and then it was gone. But if she had to ask someone, she would have to ask her. She was capable, if only a bit naive, but she had a strong will and she was eager, to learn, to thrive, to fight. However, her loyalties were well placed onto Belyakov’s lap, and that was her fatal flaw, what would bring her to ruins. Not by her hand – no, she didn’t want to hurt the girl, she felt a fondness towards her, one she wasn’t afraid to admit, even though she was probably being stupid because of that – but by his. Belyakov took as much care of his tools as a rich kid who gets a new one whenever one breaks.

Yelena was the new toy, but it wouldn’t take long until she slipped, on mission or on a conversation, or maybe she just looked at him in a wrong away, and she would be tossed aside too. She could see that the girl would be heartbroken. Maybe then, she thought. Maybe then, we could leave. Right now, however, alerting her of her future was the same as playing the suicide bell. So she swallowed her thought, kept it stored in the back of her throat, ready to come out if she needed it but held deep inside of her so no one would know it.

 **“I know.”** She replied calmly, going back to look at the wall.

She didn’t – of course no one had told her, they had grown keen of keeping her in the dark, as if it was a new hobby of all of them – but she had guessed it already. Rumlow had given his job to her, and now the only thing he had to do was torment James more, push him over the edge more than the machine already did, toss salt at his wounds.

Natalia bit down on her tongue holding her doubt inside. How far were they from getting what they wanted? How much left of James there was? How would he be once they were done?

But she knew the answer to that question. She could see it on herself, and on Yelena. Her young self, even though she couldn’t tell how many years ago that were and for how long she had been young, and she tried her best not to think about that but she wanted to, she wanted so bad to make sense of all that and James’ treatment had been painting her past in a new color, as violent as the red she had all over her history but more gruesome, the color of a nightmare. She had never been afraid of monsters under her bed. Since she was a child, she was taught – programmed? – to think of herself as one of them. Right now, however, she could feel them creeping up to her at night, climbing on top of her body, chest against her back, breathing down her neck, whispering in her ear, hands on her waist, pulling her closer, holding her down. She might be a monster, but she was still an outsider, something not meant to be there or to be at all, and they knew it, everyone knew it. How much of a sadist Belyakov had to be to keep her breathing, on the edge of sanity, balancing herself on a tightrope and the only moment he lend her a hand was when she was about to fall.

James would be put in that same position. So would Yelena, and did the girl know? She didn’t seem to. Her love and determination blinded her, and Natalia wished she could make her see, make her understand that it wasn’t something to thrive for. Be a soldier, she wanted to tell her. If you want to fight for Russia, be a soldier. When the war ends, you could go back to your home, to your parents – to their warmth. You could put on lipstick because you wanted to, cut your hair short because you wanted to. But the girl was too greedy and too good to listen to her advice, and that was why she never said anything. – she wouldn’t even know how to anyway.

 

* * *

 

The night was quiet, the silence filled with people’s steady breathing while they slept, on their rooms or dorms, everyone tucked in. Even James. She wondered if he was asleep as well, or if he couldn’t do that anymore, if he just sat there waiting for the door to open and to her to drag him through the hallways to be tortured in front of a room full of people, all eyes on him, watching his disgrace.

Anyone who stopped at her door and listened would think she was asleep to. She kept her breathing even, the handcuff lying beside her head while she prolonged the moment to put it on. – the idea of Yelena walking into her room and spotting her without it around her wrist was terrifying. She would question her, or worse, report her. But she didn’t feel like locking herself up against the bed frame, and she was lingering on the sweet minutes before she had to, staring at her ceiling and letting her mind run. She didn't fight it. She was getting quite tired of war.

One thought had been bothering her, poking at her brain at every moment it could, and she had been a mess of conflicting impulses, one moment accepting it at its fullest and the other completely denying it, and on the other ones, pretending it didn’t exist. She missed him. She missed James. Talking to him, hearing his voice, late at night or early in the morning, they never really knew which time it was, and it didn’t matter, it was dark anyway. It calmed her down, it helped her remember how to breathe when she felt she couldn’t. It had stupidity and danger written all over it, and it didn’t matter if she was in terms or not with her feelings, that fact always screamed at her, pulsing in front of her eyes and clouding her thoughts. However, it was getting harder to deny or ignore.

She slipped outside of her bed, putting on her boots and not bothering to change her clothes, getting up in a swift move and walking towards the door. She walked quietly through the hallways, her feet taking her to where she wanted to go without her having to think twice, but only because she had thought twice about it, she had thought countless of times of doing what she was doing right now. Every time she questioned herself, she almost start doing that same path, but she always held herself together, kept herself on her place, chin up and jaw clenched. Now, however – two am, four hours away from when she had to go pick James with Yelena – she didn’t need to hide it from anyone. No one was awake, and she had to know. However, she was proven wrong in a matter of minutes. Rumlow was turning on the corner and he was too close for her to try to hide. She mastered her expression as fast as she could, lowering her eyebrow and forcing herself to calm down before he could spot here. He seemed surprised – he could be a tremendous spy, but he didn’t care enough to hide his true emotions when he was in there. Too much confidence on his importance, most likely. – and looked at her frowning his eyebrows lightly.

 **“Black Widow.”** He cooed at her, as if she was a child.

 **“Rumlow.”** She greeted, nodding with her head at him, stopping on her tracks while he kept walking towards her.

 **“What are you doing out so late?”** He eyed her while he spoke, trying to look to something that was out of a place, a mistake. Anything that would help him catch her, as if he could smell that she was up to no good, just like the dog he was.

 **“I got hungry.”** She smiled casually, as if she was talking to an old friend, even though she was unaware of what that was. It was a good excuse and she had it on the tip of her tongue from the moment she saw him, knowing he would ask. She had been ill and skipped all the meals in the day, not having the guts to leave her room before everyone was asleep, and she would end up missing breakfast now that she had to take James to the room.

 **“Didn’t you eat today?”** He asked, raising one eyebrow in a cheeky way.

 **“I’ve been ill.”** She replied dryly, crossing her arms in front of her chest in a sign of discontent, as he still judged her, but kept quiet. He seemed to be searching something to talk about. **“Can I go now or do we need to have this interesting conversation at two in the morning?”** She asked, making her voice sound tedious, even though all she could think about was going back to her path, not even wanting to know what he was doing outside at that time.

His brows furrowed deeper with annoyance and he took a step back from her, even though it was the opposite he was going before. He didn’t like to be defied, but it was late and he was the lesser of her monsters right now. He nodded shortly and passed by her, brushing his shoulder against her, almost bumping into her, in a desperate need to prove he was better than her somehow. She rolled her eyes, staring from ahead, but when she turned, she gave a coy smile at him, without showing her teeth and waved quietly. He replied, politely, and entered his room, while she made her way to the kitchen. It would take her longer that way, but it was better to follow her story first. She served herself of some food, her closed mind not even allowing her to think of getting something different than she would get in the dining hall and she ate in her normal pace, as she would if she was being watched, because she couldn’t help but feel watched at all moments in that place.

She didn’t want to see James, she thought while she got back on her pace. No, she saw him the last day and she would see him every day, like clockwork. She wanted to talk to him, something she had been unable to do so since they opened the door to her cell and pulled her out of the hole, and talking to him was something she missed more than she wanted to admit. Natalia longed to hear his voice in a way that sounded human and not like a howl. Finally, she reached where she wanted to be, and avoiding to look to the cell that trapped her a few weeks before she kneeled close to James’ door. She didn’t have a key, and she didn’t go looking for one. It wouldn’t make any difference to her – even though the thought of touching him, just because she wanted to, not to subside him or take him to a beating, felt heartwarming, but also impossible, something so out of reach that she didn’t even linger on it.

“James.” She called quietly, placing her hand against the door and pressing her ear against it as well, trying to listen to his breathing so she could tell if he was asleep or not, even though she doubted his breathing would be calm in any of the situations.

“James, c’mon.” She repeated, a little bit louder. A grunt was what she got in response. Natalia bit down on her lip, looking at the door while a rising panic filled her chest. Maybe he couldn’t speak anymore. Was there any use for him to speak? Maybe they just wanted him to hold a weapon and shoot. He had a different bar code carved on his skin. He was the Winter Soldier. She was the Black Widow – a Black Widow, apparently.

She closed her hands into a fist, her knuckles now pressing against the door, her breathing getting heavier.

“You just need to hold a little bit longer.” She reassured him, but she felt as if she was talking to herself. The silence lingered for a few moments while she tried to find something to say that it wasn’t a lie. The last thing she wanted to do was lie to him, but it was hard finding a upside on the situation he was.

 _"You just need to hold a little bit longer"_ , yes, that was the truth. They were almost finished with him, or at least with the first part of the process. She just didn’t know what was next, and she felt as if there were no comfort for him there. The beatings wouldn’t stop, and she doubted they would get better. He was in for a life of pain, of being choked down, of having no control or autonomy over his own body, of obeying. Obey, obey, obey. Read the briefing, go to the place, complete the mission or die trying. The only reward he would get was being allowed to live in this sick form of half-life they had, but it was better than the alternative, right? Right?

She couldn’t tell anymore. Maybe she should have taken a key. Open the door and killed him. She could have taken the life from his body in a merciful way. The angel of Death. She had taken so many lives, in so many ways. She could kill a person dozens of different ways, without hesitation, without thinking of a better option. She had stained herself with blood and guts for causes that didn’t even begin to be noble, she could do this one more. For a good reason. To keep James Barnes alive. Or at least his memory. To not let him turn into something like her. A tool.

“James.” She called one more time, not moving to complete her plan, already letting it escape her mind, knowing even though she was able to pull it off and go undiscovered, she wouldn’t be able to go through with it and betray Belyakov and Russia like that.

“Bucky!” She tried for his nickname, for a last time, her voice coming out broken and shaken, the tears building up on the back of her eyes and she felt her nose burn from the inside.

A thud resonated through the wall and she could almost picture James trying to move, his new arm serving as support to push himself up, the grunts he made showing that he found the idea of movement too effortful.

 **“Who… the hell is Bucky?”** He questioned, toneless, a dry, harsh voice, almost unrecognizable if not for the hint of honesty and pain that she had grown so fond of, that belonged to James deeply so. But James wasn’t there anymore. The Winter Soldier had been born, and she couldn’t help but feel how much guilt she bore, how much that stained her of a deep, dark red, more than anything she had ever done.


End file.
